9/4/24 - 2058: An Encore with Impact

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: In this country and in the church pews all over America, Christians have been taught that the American dream of retirement is biblical. That working hard for 45 years gives you the right to check out on vacation for the rest of your lives.

Baloney! Show me that scripture, would you? Is that in first hesitations? Our friend Doug Hunter knew that retirement was only a new phase in life, and not just 30 years of vacation. Doug knew that God had way more for him to do in his remaining years on this planet. As a successful businessman, Doug knew how to pour his life into others to bring out the best in them for themselves and for others.

Doug is a great example for all of us as he's learned to work with God in his retirement. Doug Hunter, welcome to iWork4Him.

Doug Hunter: I am excited to be with you. I love what you do and I love the fact that we are all working for him.

Martha: Amen.

Jim: Oh, we're working with him, Doug. That's what we're working towards. Working with him. That's right. That's right. Amen.

Martha: That's so good. So we can't wait to get started in talking about how God is using you in your retirement, but retirement with air quotes for those that are listening to the podcast. But first we want to hear how you became a Jesus follower.

Doug Hunter: Oh I'll do the short version, which of course is not necessary. That's great. My wife and I both grew up in church going families, but in a very liberal denomination. She grew up in South Dakota and I grew up in Colorado. And the denomination had a college in Oklahoma. We of course didn't know each other at that point, but we both made the decision to get away from home and go to Enid, Oklahoma. So we met at Phillips University and I won't tell you that story, but it, that's a great story.

Martha: I bet it is.

Doug Hunter: But what happened was when I got thrown out of that college we got married. Actually, we got married a year before I got thrown out. But when I got thrown out, we moved to South Dakota because I expected to be drafted. It was in the early seventies.

And when we arrived, soon after we arrived, Janet's sister, Judy, Janet's maiden name, by the way, was Snook. So that's one of the things that got my attention. What's a Snook? I had no idea, but I found out and I fell in love with a Snook. Her sister, Judy went to a campus crusade retreat at the university of Iowa and came home. Those were the days when you could go to the gate and meet people coming off the plane.

And as she was coming up the ramp out of the plane, Janet said to me, she's different. There's something about her. And she took us home, shared the four spiritual laws with both of us. Janet heard John 10: 10 for the first time, and it just struck a chord with her. It didn't do anything for me. But over the next six months, Janet's life changed right before my very eyes.

We were struggling in our first year of marriage, but she just changed. She started to love me and accept me and quit criticizing me. And as I watched her life change I knew I needed that. So on the way to sell my first elevator, I was in the elevator business for 25 years. I had learned to install them.

So I finally got an opportunity to go to sell an elevator to Dan Eagle, the chief of the Yankton Sioux Indian tribe in Yankton, South Dakota. And on the way to meet Dan Eagle, God and I had a conversation. It's a 90 mile trip so we had a good time to talk. And I just simply said, God, I don't know what you're doing in Janet's life, but I needed you to do something in my life because I'm sure not doing anything that's - it's not good.

And he answered that prayer, as simple as it was. And at that point, I didn't know what that meant, but I went home and a few weeks later, we got an ad for Expo 72, Campus Crusades, big meeting in Dallas. And I asked Janet if she wanted to go, and she said why would you want to go?

Because I hadn't told her anything about this praying thing. But I shared with her what had happened. We went to Expo and started to grow as Christians. She started in 71. I started in 72, and it's been an amazing trip ever since. So that's how I came to Christ on the way to sell an elevator to an Indian chief.

Jim: Love that. Love that. All right. So let's fast forward to the future. Let's go back to the future. How many years ago did you quote unquote retire?

Doug Hunter: I turned 65 in , let's see, what would that have been? I was born in 1948. So what's 65 and 48? 13?

Jim: Yeah, 13. 20 13.

Doug Hunter: 20 13, in 2013 when most people were retiring I accepted a call to Charleston Southern University to start a leadership center. So in the year I was supposed to retire I went to work for Charleston Southern and we started the Whitfield Center for Christian Leadership there in Charleston, South Carolina. That was the point at which I should have retired. Now I'm 76. So that's 11 years ago. And we grew that, that was a lot of fun.

Starting things has been one of the things God has put on my plate. And did that until COVID kind of destroyed that program and at least temporarily and a couple of other things brought us back to Atlanta. So that's been what's gone on.

Jim: So before you were retired though, you were in the elevator business. Things were always picking up.

 (laughter)

Martha: Oh, he's never heard that before.

Jim: I'm sure he never heard that before.

Doug Hunter: Our corporate verse was John 12: 32 where Jesus says, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw men to myself. So yeah, I was in the elevator business for 25 years, headquartered in the upper Midwest. It was a seven state regional company installed elevators, escalators. Just a wonderful opportunity with a wonderful organization.

Martha: I love that. So at what point in your career did you actually learn to work with God? Was that just naturally because of the time of your life when you met Jesus? Or did somewhere that get awakened in you?

Doug Hunter: There were two probably critical moments in answer to that question, Martha. One was when I started seminary. I thought I should be a pastor. I was called out of seminary in to business. And I won't tell you that story, but it's another one, when you've been around as long as I have, you got lots of stories . But when I left seminary, I had an opportunity to get involved with Bible study fellowship.

It's the world's largest Bible study. And I became the teaching leader of the men's class in Sioux Falls. And as I was teaching, the first year I taught was the history of Israel and the minor prophets. And that's where I first understood that everything I did needed to focus and depend on God. And that's also where I learned that the only place that retirements referenced in the Bible is if you're a Levite.

Martha: Yeah.

Doug Hunter: I wasn't a Levite, so I knew early on I wasn't ever going to be able to retire. That just wasn't a biblical thing.

Jim: We've had that conversation on iWork4Him many times, and on iRetire4Him as well. If you're not a Levitical priest, which is basically a butcher, the Levitical priests were butchers. They were slinging animals. And they did it for 25 years. And the scriptures are really clear after they retired, quote unquote, they went to train up the next generation.

All right. So today we're tiptoeing into this conversation about retirement from a biblical perspective. So now it seems like a great time to make sure that you all know about iRetire4Him,.a podcast that we had out there for four years. We have a book, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and a Facebook page that you can share with friends that are chronologically superior and help yourself better prepare for the years ahead.

Martha and I will put all those links in the show notes below, but just make sure you check out iRetire4Him and share it with, like I said, your chronologically superior friends.

Martha: So Doug, I have a question for you because now that you are in this phase of life, we're not going to say retired, but a lot of people look at you as retirement age.

Jim: What did she just say? A lot of people look at you and think old. That's what they think. They think old.

Martha: No. That's Jim speaking. This is Martha speaking. Doug knows how I talk. So this is going to be us here having a conversation. You're going to stay out of it. (laughs)

So you have a lot of kids and grandkids that typically your peers would think that's where you would just pour your life into them, check out for 30 years, whatever this vacations phase might be now. Move into a 55 plus neighborhood and that's all you're going to do, but that's not what it looks like for you. Why is that?

Doug Hunter: A number of reasons. One is that God has always put me in positions that I love, so working for him has always been a joy. It's not without its bumps. Don't get me wrong there because I've been fired and other things. But for the most part, everything that, that he's put me in the middle of I have loved and never felt like it was work. It was more of just an incredible blessing.

The priority of pouring into my grandkids isn't any less because I'm doing other things. The mentality that I'm sure I share with you is that I was just reassigned at different stages in my life. So I've gotten, I've had assignments now, especially over these last few years, that have allowed me to do the best of all of it. You know, we just kept our grandkids for all of last week because their parents were, our daughter and her husband, celebrating 15 years of marriage on a cruise. So we had the flexibility to spend a lot of time with them and keep them.

Martha: Awesome.

Doug Hunter: But at the same time I can do a lot because of the kinds of things we're doing now.

Jim: So I know that you worked at Charleston Southern helping start up that center for leadership, but now you are really in charge of , you help curate deepening partner relationships within the Pinnacle Forum. Talk to us about your role today within Pinnacle Forum.

Doug Hunter: Okay, the tough answer to that is that I haven't been with Pinnacle Forum for about three months now because of their leadership transition so they made some changes and that's all good. But what's happening with Pinnacle is that they are really focusing on the idea of those small Pinnacle Forum groups, which are groups of about 10, no more than about 10 or 12 men or women or young men or young women that are leaders and our wanting to be more impactful in the culture so they meet together every week for an hour and a half, and they sharpen each other. They work through resources. They make plans to be intentional in how they can impact whether it's the culture of their family or the culture of their city, or if they're running for national office, whatever it is.

So that's what's happening with Pinnacle right now. They're refining and improving that part of their offering. And then they'll be reestablishing opportunities for people across the Pinnacle world. And Pinnacle is a national organization. Opportunities for all of them to gather together and get to know each other beyond just their forum experience.

Jim: Okay. So that just was news to me, even though we're good friends, I had no idea. So that was an awkward question. Didn't mean to ask you an awkward question. So the really cool question is, so if God freed your future from Pinnacle Forum, where's God taking you next?

Doug Hunter: Yeah, that's a great question. One of the, one of the joys of, asking God about what this whole stage of life looks like. For me I've always served on boards and I happen to be on the board of two different organizations right now that are really exciting and impacting a lot. One is in the marketplace that you're a part of, the National Faith and Work Association. I'm one of the founding board members there and I'm vice chairman right now. And we're about to restructure and take it to another level because we've become the shepherds of the every two year summit for marketplace leaders. And we want to handle that well and support what you're doing as well as others in the marketplace movement in every way possible.

The other organization is a mission organization, 85 years old, called Partners International. I'm also the vice chairman of that board. And we're right now starting a search for a new CEO. It's a great organization that equips and expands the capacity of indigenous church planting movements in the hardest places to reach in the world.

And so I get a chance to work in the U S marketplace, in the global mission field, and then I'm on the advisory board for the Luson marketplace, the work that they do in the marketplace. And I'm on the board of the college of business at Charleston Southern. So right now I'm taking all of the things that God built into me and in one way or another, I'm building into other organizations by serving as a board member. All volunteer, but it's a lot of fun. Great people to work with, too.

Martha: It's interesting that at different phases of our life, our trajectory continues to change, and we have to step in those steps of faith and ask the Lord what it is that we are seeking. And I love hearing that from you, Doug, because we need to learn from the wisdom of others how God is using them.

And speaking of that changing trajectory, in the past year or so, we have made a few changes at iWork4Him and one of those changes was to start using SaferNet VPN. SaferNet is really the superhero for every home and every office need that you may have. Their program is working in the background, fighting cyber issues before we ever even know that they exist. So their features include a VPN, internet controls, and virus protection, plus 84 filters that give you a focused online experience. And we're really glad that we added that protection to all of our devices. And all of you listeners can do that too, just by going to safer net. com.

Jim: Doug, have you ever had an opportunity to mentor anybody?

Doug Hunter: Oh, yes. Yeah, the first organization that I became a part of was CBMC which at that point was Christian Businessmen's Committee, and now it's the Christian Businessmen's Connection.

But I learned early on there, that took the form of discipleship in their program Operation Timothy, where you've got a Paul Timothy relationship that takes someone deeper, a new believer. , but yes. One of the joys of developing in the technological evolution that we've been all been in is that I've got mentor relationships with people around the world.

One of the joys of my walk with the Lord has been, it's been global. Yes I mentor a limited number at a time, so I'm not going crazy and they're not getting less than they should, but I've been in mentoring relationships probably almost as long as I've been walking with Christ.

Martha: That's so good. And that's something that we've really been diving into lately, because for a lot of people, they think it seems so formal that they don't even know, like, where to start, who that would be. How would you have that relationship? What does it look like? And so I always like to dig in a little bit deeper, Doug, so that people can get a little peek into what that might look like in your life so that they can more practically see that that they could step into that role as well. So when you mentor somebody, what does that look like for you?

Doug Hunter: It actually, Martha, can take several forms, but it generally takes the form of someone that has been exposed either when I've spoken somewhere or been a part of a group. And I always try to make it known that I'm open to those kinds of relationships so that that people can at least come and we can talk about it.

But for me, it generally looks - there've been some that have been so intense that they've lasted. I just had lunch with a guy that I mentored for six years. We met every Monday for six years and spent time together, spend time with him as his family grew and we talked about, we worked through fatherhood issues and marriage issues as well as his business issues.

He was an executive with a bank. So there have been short set things along the lines of an Operation Timothy kind of situation. But there have been others that have been more relational and have gone on for numbers of years. In every one of them, the target has always been to, to help whoever it is I'm mentoring to be absolutely sold out to Jesus, to have a sense of what the calling of Christ is on his life or her life, primarily is. I don't one on one mentor women because of all the issues there. But then having them be intentional with a plan about what they're going to do as they grow, where they want to be, what impact they want to make, and how they're going to do that.

Martha: So I can imagine for most people listening, they look at that and they go, boy, Doug does nothing but give. How has that fed into you as you've been mentoring people over the years? Because I believe that you've probably gained a little something along the way.

Doug Hunter: Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's no relationship that's one way, that's all give and no get. For instance this man that I talked about that we did six years I watched him, he became a Bible study teaching leader and taught for 26 years. Just watching the impact that he had and knowing somewhere that, that I was a part of that.

And one of the most important mentoring relationship I've ever had has been with my kids. And it's watching where they are in their walk with the Lord and watching how God uses them and what he's doing in their lives. So it's all a matter of being able to taste the fruit in one way or another. It's not without its bumps. Again, I don't want to make it too all rosy. There, there are all kinds of interesting bumps along the way, but nevertheless, there is fruit that God makes sure you can generally see and enjoy and be encouraged by.

Jim: I love that, and I love the fact that you're pouring your life into others.

And we want to encourage everybody listening. Every believer listening, everybody needs a Paul in their life, somebody that's chronologically superior further along in the faith than you. Everybody needs a Barnabas in their life, somebody that's an encouragement. And everybody needs a Timothy, somebody you could be pouring your life into.

Just, that model is the model. And it's not like a specific discipleship curriculum, people. No, we're talking, pour your life into others. It's what it is. Doug, before we go, I want to ask you this question. You've experienced so much of life and you have great wisdom because you've shared it with us. We've been friends for a lot of years. What's one piece of wisdom you'd like to pass on to our audience today?

Doug Hunter: That's always a difficult question, Jim, nailing down one, but probably the most important thing that I learned in my life . Submission. And the lesson of submission and learning to submit to the Lord.

There's a great old hymn, Trust and Obey, that's a pretty good piece of advice. And I think you've probably heard it from many people that you talk to, but I've found that to be the best thing to learn early on. To trust God and then to obey God. What you have trusted him for when he tells you what to do with it. So that's my advice is to trust and obey and learn to do that as early in your life as you can.

Jim: Because there's no other way. Trust and obey. There's no other way. That's right All right.

And it just came to my thinking, so it's based on your testimony somewhere around 53 years of marriage. What was the one thing you did that helped your marriage be successful? You. I'm sure Janet did a lot of things, too.

Doug Hunter: I learned to obey.

Jim: Now, Doug.

Doug Hunter: No, actually, Janet's always been a couple of steps ahead of me, whether it was in school or coming to Christ or spiritual maturity. And even though I don't do it well, I think the thing that's really made our marriage a joy is that God taught me to listen to her and to obey him when I hear him speaking through her. And we just love talking and being together. So spending a lot of time and letting her know that she's the second most important person in my life every day. That's where that goes.

Jim: Very cool. Doug Hunter, thanks for joining us on iWork4Him today, sharing how your quote unquote retirement years have been explosive and fun and life changing. And I can't wait to see, besides these incredible board assignments that you've got, what God's got for you next. Doug, thanks for being with us.

Doug Hunter: Thanks for inviting me. It's a joy.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace? It's our mission field. But ultimately, iWork4Him.

8/28/24 - 2057: Mentoring, Pass It On

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: To say that our country's at a critical crossroads is an understatement. Am I talking politics? Heck no. That's not what this show is about. I'm talking about the church forgetting how to be the church. For 70 or 80 years, the church has become a cruise ship in our society. For 70 years, the church has withdrawn from culture and is focused inwardly on creating an environment where everyone goes to church, feels part of the family, but the community around the church and the community around the church building feels a little alienated, irritated, and lost.

We've got to remember what being the church looks like, feels like, and acts like. I found one guy out of the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area who's acting like the church and changing lives forever through creating a multi generational mentoring program. Eric Fogg, welcome to iWork4Him.

Eric Fogg: Hey, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jim: Eric, we always start off every show with this question. What's your Jesus story?

Eric Fogg: I got a really cool Jesus story, especially in the relationship to mentoring. My story started out really young. I started in business when I was nine years old. My father started a business on purpose to train all of us boys - I'm the oldest of five boys - to do business. And he bought a lathe, which is a machine that turns parts. And we started carving plastic when I was nine, I was the only employee. And as you aged up, the other brothers, when they turned nine also became part of the business.

And dad started an intentionally mentorship business. Simple stuff: writing invoices, shipping packages, going through the process of being on time, which we almost never were. And started that process of just growing inward towards business. He also was a giant Jesus lover, and so we got the two things at the same time of both spiritual, mental, and generational mentorship.

Kind of like in the Old Testament where the father would walk with the son and teach him his trade. And really had that till 14 years old. And then he and I bought another business that made pen sets for banks. So locally here, if you've ever been to a bank with a pen on a chain and a filter, I probably made that here in the Grand Rapids area.

By the time I was 18 years old, I got fired. The family rules were you had to get fired. As you had to go off and work for somebody else, go to college, get married, work for someone else for five years before you could even be eligible to apply back to the family business to work there. And out of that thought process I did not join the family business.

I ended up meeting a wonderful lady. We've been married almost 30 years and have four wonderful assets that God has allowed us to take and steward in our household. They're 25, 23, 21, and 13. And, as we were going through this process of business, growing, life, we were a mess. We were a raging, stinking mess.

Our story is more along the lines of - our marriage, as we have agreed to call it now, was seven years of health, seven years of hard, seven years of healing, seven years of hope, and I'm praying that these next seven years are the seven years of hot, but we're working on it.

Jim: This is a PG rated show.

 (laughter)

Eric Fogg: 30 years into it and we are, we're doing great. But, our mentoring process really got started when we were in the seven years of HARD. We were so desperate for someone to come into our space to help us. We literally went to our church and said, will you provide someone to walk with us? And they heard our problems and they said, very politely no. We went to a big church, and we got no's from everyone we asked.

And we effectively started the process of starving to death for mentorship. Fast forward 10 years, we ended up buying a small business here, ran it for 12 years. God called us out and we sold everything we had and moved to Costa Rica for language school. Six and a half years in the jungles of Ecuador doing clean water projects for a Christian mission agency and came back here to Holland, Michigan, seven years ago.

And we were told we were a mess. I don't know how else to describe that as we had gone through a worldview change and stepped back into - the world we left and the world we came back to we're not the same. Lots of funny stories there we'll save for another time . And in the process of doing that we got introduced to mentorship , and a couple of young men said hey will you take and meet with us ? And so I started that process, eventually starting the thing through Truth at Work and doing what we call now Emerging Leaders.

Jim: So that's really the question we want to ask. So you're an engineer by trade and now you've answered how you became a business mentor. So a couple of guys approach you, but how did Truth at Work come into this? Tell people about what Truth at Work is and how it came to be a part of it.

Eric Fogg: So when we came back from Ecuador, we didn't leave on the terms that we'd ever dreamed. They were most unpleasant. And I spent the next six months being mad at God. I literally thought that God had yanked away the calling that he had so clearly placed on our life. And it took nine months to come to the place of thank you. Thank you, Lord, for, I know this sounds terrible, but thank you, Lord, for my mom passing away.

That became the catalyst that started this process, and she loved Jesus very much. And thank you, Lord, for all these six or seven things that lined up randomly, and we thought that we had lost our air. And God was trying to save our family. And it became very clear after nine months of this process that God was on a mission. And what felt like horrible was absolutely hands down an incredible blessing. It just didn't feel like it. It's like thanking God for unanswered prayers. And as we got through this process, I didn't know what to do with myself and finally declared to the Lord. All right. I know I'm here on purpose.

So there must be a purpose for me to be here. And I started just turning over stones in my life. All right, that's an opportunity. I'll hang on to that one. Nope, nope. Nope, and one of those opportunities came up with Truth at Work.

Jim: So hang on to that thought and I'm gonna let Martha finish that line of questioning but we want to take a break and just thank one of our sponsors .

So I love the name Truth at Work. It has so many meanings, truth, work, put it all together. It should not be assumed that companies we surround ourselves with biblical truth operate truthfully. We had a lot of people that are Christians are in business. They don't necessarily do that. But we know that there are many companies that directly oppose our biblical standards yet we utilize their services out of convenience for ourselves. We've recently identified several services that our audience needs and found kingdom solutions for each one of those needs. Go to the sponsor page on the iWork4Him website to learn more about these solutions and connect with them today. iWork4Him.com/sponsors and a little later in the show Martha's going to tell you about a specific company that you should pay attention to today.

Martha: Eric, you've given us some great background and how God has obviously worked in your heart in a lot of different ways, but let's talk specifically about Truth at Work and maybe just who might be listening that's actually a good fit for Truth at Work near them?

Eric Fogg: Truth at Work is a mission based organization out of Indianapolis, Indiana. It's about 25 years old. I run a local chapter office here in West Michigan. And it services really two separate groups of people. One are business owners and leaders, people that are firmly established, that are struggling with hurts, habits, hangups.

They're struggling with Partnership agreements, EOS, inventory management systems wealth management, transfer of business, buying and selling of companies, all the things that run through a business owner's head and essentially Truth at Work is a round table where you can answer what I believe is the hardest question a business owner has ever been asked , and that's how are you?

Cause business owners lie. They told the truth once at home and scared their spouse. They told the truth at church. They scared everybody. They finally just said, listen, this is not worth it. You don't understand. I don't have time to explain it to you. You're not going to understand it anyway, and I'm fine.

Jim: Which means, freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional, but most people don't know the code. Truth at Work, it's a round table for business people. Is it just business people, or is it organizational leaders as well?

Eric Fogg: It can be leaders as well. Every chapter president sets the standard depending on how many kinds of businesses are in their space. For me, personally in West Michigan, if you have a great business idea wow, this is transformational. And the question that goes through your mind is, I have to ask my boss if I can do that. Then you're not high enough in the organization to do Truth at Work on the established leader side. But that is exactly opposite on the emerging leader side.

Jim: You're always, you're leading me. Like that was my question next. Those are my questions. All right. So here's the deal. So you've got a couple of these Truth at Work groups with groups of 10 or 12 business leaders, organizational leaders, coming together, being honest with each other, trying to grow in all those areas that you mentioned. And, but you've out of this have grown four groups of Emerging Leaders. How did that start?

Eric Fogg: So it literally started with three guys and breakfast at a restaurant here in town. Nothing fancy. They just said, Hey, we're meeting together. We're stuck. And we started to just sit down and talk about business, life, marriage opportunities, just.. Usually Emerging Leaders, they're struggling with their first girlfriend, they're just getting married, they're just having their first kid, just buying a house, trying to figure out the difference between a job and a career, and their life is in chaos. I love it. It is so high speed. When they're on kingdom mission, they're growing so fast that they can't keep up with themselves.

And so we started with three and over the course of maybe a year, it grew to 12. And it stayed at 12 for a long time, about four years unchanged. And then it went from 12 to 17 to 28, almost immediately, from a calendar point of view. The lives of the men that were in the group were so changed that they couldn't stop telling their friends about it.

And out of the process of literal business minded, Jesus focused community, they started to take and just spread the word and Truth at Work Emerging Leaders is a fantastic place. You don't have to be a business owner. You don't have to be married. You don't have to be from separate companies. All we require is that you love Jesus. And that you want to change.

Martha: Awesome.

Eric Fogg: Because Emerging Leaders is totally geared for change.

Martha: So you talked at the beginning of the show about how important mentoring is to you. And you are using that with Emerging Leaders. You're actually finding a mentor for every one of them, is that correct?

Eric Fogg: Yeah, so it started out that I was the mentor. But as the groups grew that became impractical and I committed to the group and said I will do my best to find a mentor at least 20 to 30 years older than you for every single person so that you can have someone to go to lunch with and they can ask you the hardest question of how are you . And through this process of searching out mentors, I realized a couple of things.

When we were growing up as kids, we went to church together. Old people, middle people, young people. During the 80s and 90s, you had old person church and middle person church and young person church. By the time it got to COVID, old people had moved so far away from church that they didn't even know a young person anymore. And technology got in the way where they didn't know what to do with them, how to communicate with them.

And then COVID got in the way and everybody became afraid to mix circles. And I realized that as a 54 year old guy, half of my friends were old and half of them were young. And I could be a link to link the generations together to allow those relationships to get built. And it has been super, super powerful.

Martha: Has it been hard to find those mentors then for the Emerging Leaders? To make that link, to make that connection?

Eric Fogg: The first 20 were easy. They were closer friends, so I didn't ask them as much as I assigned them a guy. The next 18 has been much harder as it's gone out more into larger circles and had to seek out partner, reach out to CBMC, Christian Businessmen's Committee, and others in the local area to expand that ring.

Because not only are the Emerging Leaders now geographically further away, but they're also outside of my sphere of influence and I've had to reach out. So it has been noticeably harder for the last 18 than the first.

Jim: So would you say that when you connect up a chronologically superior person with somebody who's chronologically inferior that mentoring relationship, is this being successful? Are you seeing lives changed spiritually spiritual walks deepened?

Eric Fogg: Yes.

Jim: Okay, that's what you say. That's what you say, but you got somebody that can prove that to our audience. Tell us who you brought in with you today.

Eric Fogg: I brought with me Paul Dunteman. He is one of the Emerging Leaders started on the first 12 people. And he's been walking with Emerging Leaders for the last, Ooh, I would guess four years. I'm getting old. So my timeframe gets all messed up.

Martha: Yeah. He says five.

Jim: Paul, welcome to iWork4Him. It's nice that Eric says it's going great, but I want to hear it from your mouth. First of all, where does God have you working right now today?

Paul Dunteman: Yeah thanks for having me on the show today. Right now I am a consultant in new markets tax credits. Really high level, that's a funding source available for typically new construction projects or rehabilitation projects in low income communities. So a lot of the organizations that I work with to help get access to the funding are supportive housing organizations that might have wraparound services, new medical facilities, workforce development programs.

Martha: Excellent. So as far as mentorship is concerned, did you want, were you seeking a mentor or did Eric tell you this was something you had to participate in?

Paul Dunteman: Eric and I got a kick out of that question when we were reviewing some of the questions. I think for a long time, I've known the value of having a mentor and I would break it into two different categories.

You have your spiritual mentors that help you with your faith walk, and then you have your business mentors. And when I met Eric, he married the two together where our businesses are actually impacted by our relationship with God. And so I visited a meeting for the first time and hearing the attendees and the guys go deep quickly and just be vulnerable, it created a space that I didn't want to miss out on and so Eric unintentionally forced me into it by creating such a good space that was hard to not want to be part of.

Jim: He volun- told you. That's right. So Paul, the value of having somebody in your life who's chronologically superior to you - hats off to Grant Skelton who came up with that term, Chronologically superior - How much has that been of value to you to have somebody that's in your life who's further along in life and experience than you are?

Paul Dunteman: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think having someone further along in life is really helpful in separating emotion from reality when you encounter problems and issues . There's a lot of times and even this past year, I had a something come up in my own career that was problematic to me and I couldn't find a way out and had a lot of negative emotion to that And Eric looked at that same exact problem and said, this is great. You have great opportunity. And being able to see it from his perspective of how this issue was actually opportunity just changed the way that I look at my own emotions compared to what the reality is.

Martha: Yeah. So really having that person to bounce things off of and give you that different perspective is so valuable in so many ways. How about it in your own personal walk with the Lord and in your own home even? How has the mentoring helped?

Paul Dunteman: Eric has eight rules, actually nine, that's in the making right now. And you can tell from his story, these were formed as he was going through his own walk with the Lord and his rule number one is this world is not my home. I will stop treating it like it is. And what he's meaning with that rule is separating our identity from the world and placing our identity in Christ.

And the past year and a half, that's been something that I've had to separate identity from status at work or money that I could make at work, or titles and place that identity into Christ and that's impacted my marriage. It's impacted my career. And It's just an example of one of the nuggets that we generate from having a mentor.

Jim: Yeah I don't remember who originated but somebody once said, some famous person came up with the idea that everybody needs a Paul in their life, a Barnabas in their life, and a Timothy in their life. So you've got Eric as one of your Paul's, maybe he's your Barnabas too. And you've got this other mentor . Who's your Timothy? Are you mentoring anyone yet, Paul?

Paul Dunteman: Yeah, I'm really humbled and honored to be leading a Truth at Work round table. Now, as Eric mentioned, the amount of guys that want to go through this has just increased a lot the past year. And so right now we're trying to figure out how can we build a scalable model of not just having Eric in the room, but having a Paul in the room or a Josh in the room and being able to be intentional and get deep quickly with guys and really share where God guides, He provides and that the challenges that we face if we're going after where God calls us to be, that's exactly where we need to be. So that just started three months ago, and it's been amazing so far.

Jim: So final question. Didn't tell you I was gonna ask this one, but that's okay. You mentioned you were married . So what's your wife's first name?

Paul Dunteman: Nicole.

Jim: If we were to call Nicole and say, Hey, Nicole, Jim and Martha with iWork4Him, we're interviewing Paul today. He says that mentoring has made a huge impact on his life. Would you say it's made an impact on your marriage? What would Nicole say?

Paul Dunteman: That's a good question. I I think there'd be some things I would be a little afraid of. I think Nicole ultimately would say I've become more open. So I've been able to share more with her on maybe where I'm feeling and where I'm at. And I think just becoming the leader of the household, recognizing that I'm called to be provider from God, but I'm not provider. God's ultimately provider. Just recentering our relationship and marriage in a way that is following after God's calling in our life so that he's ultimate provider.

Jim: Good answer. Now, if Nicole has any questions, you can, my phone number, it's online. You could have her calling. Thanks for that answer though, Paul.

Martha: We love that, Paul. Thank you so much. And I think that's one of the values of having this conversation is that for many of us, we don't have anyone speaking into our marriages and having a safe space that is biblically grounded is huge.

A main sponsor that I want to highlight right now is SaferNet VPN. A lot of people hear us mention the different sponsors that we have for iWork4Him, but I really want the listener, all you guys, all y'all, to listen about, you know, just considering SaferNet for you personally, whether it be in your home or in your work. If you have the ability to have any influence over your protecting of your devices.

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Just go to SaferNet. com. If you have any questions, I would encourage you to email Jim. I'll have that in the show notes, at Jim at iWork4Him. com. He loves talking to people about this because it just makes sense.

Jim: As we close out the show today, Eric, there's a ton of people listening who would love to know how to start a mentoring relationship with an emerging leader or an emerging leader who would like to start a mentoring relationship with somebody chronologically superior to them, but they don't have any idea. How do you even get started? What kind of advice do you have for them today, Eric?

Eric Fogg: I guess my first advice would be to the chronologically advanced, just chronologically superior, instead of challenged. So the chronologically superior person, there's no such thing as retirement. Just cause you stop working for a living, don't stop being the kingdom of God. You finally have enough time, talent, money, and energy to take and give back. And what God has given you is a great gift.

Find somebody that, I can be a testament, and Paul can too, the emerging leaders range between say 21 and 30 years old, is starving to death to meet with somebody, and you don't have to have a book or a program or anything complicated, just sit down with a younger person and ask him, how are you? And listen .

To the younger person , it's challenging. I'd start praying I have found unfortunately that many people that you ask as a younger person, will you mentor me? They say no. And I'm sorry about that. I'm embarrassed about that, but please don't give up. Find someone that is passionate about mentorship. They are golden nuggets in your life. They can walk with you for a decade or even two. They can transform your life. Someone that is 20 years to 30 years older than you that can guide and help out with marriage and business and life and perspective. You will not regret investing in the life of a mentor.

Jim: Eric and Paul, thanks so much for being on iWork4Him today, and thanks so much for bringing Truth at Work and the Emerging Leaders. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Check out Truth at Work online at truthatwork. org and Martha will have all the links in the show notes. So thank you both for being here today with us.

Eric Fogg: Oh, thank you very much for having us. Wonderful.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.

8/21/24 - 2056: Fiction, the Stealth Evangelist

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: And we are your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: So my question is: do you have a superhero? Growing up I loved the 6 million dollar man. He was my superhero. Was he my superhero? I don't know. But when I met Jesus, I figured out that he was my superhero because he came and executed a flawless plan to rescue everyone on planet earth. Kind of Will Smith without all the collateral damage. I think the better question is, do we have a hero in the faith? A mentor, a solid biblical example of a warrior for Jesus that we not only look up to, but also live under their example?

Way too many of us operate alone and not under the influence of an elder in the faith. So how about a fictional story about a Jesus following superhero just to lighten up the conversation? A 500 page novel of a superhero who works with God. Now that's what I'm talking about. Steven Thomas is an author. He's the author from Chicago, from the Windy City. Christian incredible fiction coming out of the Windy City, and he's here to share his story of transformation and Catholic Joe, superhero. Steven, welcome to iWork4Him.

Steven Thomas: Thank you so much. It's great to be here, and that was a phenomenal introduction. I love it.

Jim: I'm glad you enjoyed it. I have a lot of fun writing those. Steven, talk to me about how you became a follower of Jesus.

Steven Thomas: It started when I was actually young, so probably 17 years old, I was in high school, parents were going through a divorce, tough times, and somebody left this little booklet. And so I read this little booklet. It was a story about Fatima and it was a story about how, it was prophetic. Was the mother of God. She talked about how the first world war was going to end. Second world war was going to start, all these other like supernatural things. And from that, I just had this just ravenous desire for scripture.

So I would just read as a teenager. And again, I was with the trouble crowd. I was like a fast moving troublemaker when I was younger but I just dove into scripture and from there it just grew, my appetite and my hunger for Christ, for the Father and the Spirit. All that stuff is just, it's just increased in intensity until this present day. Still have it.

Martha: You never know a little seed can be planted and for you as a booklet that who knows what the intentions were when it was being passed around or whatever, but I love that started your journey. So what kind of career path has God had you on?

Steven Thomas: So I started off studying for the priesthood, so I felt called to be a priest and I was five years in the seminary and quickly realized that it wasn't my calling. I wanted to get married, wanted to have children and I just, again I left, I actually taught high school for a couple of years, and then after that I moved on.

My father had a manufacturing company, so I worked for him for about 20 years. And, everything I did from the moment I taught high school to the present day is I've always tried to weave in my faith. I've always tried to have conversations - because I used to do cabinets, right? Custom cabinets. So a couple that's redoing their kitchen. I would try to weave in Oh, okay. So how many kids do you have? How many do you want to have? And then we'd start talking about family and I would always share with them, I've read that the biggest regret that people have in their 50s and 60s is they didn't have more kids.

So I was always trying to promote people to be generous, like Genesis, right? Be fruitful and multiply.

Jim: You know, we don't have 900 years to have kids though, Steve . (laughter) It's a little different than Adam and Eve. They had ten centuries to get it done. Okay. All right Yeah, you're right. I get it. I wish we'd had more kids... some days.

Steven Thomas: I've got eight. I've got eight kids and I still wish we had more kids.

Jim: And your wife's going Yeah, I think eight is enough.

Martha: Just like a TV show.

Jim: I was going to say, that's catchy. That would be a great name.

Martha: It sounds like you've had a lot of different ways that God has used you in different careers and things like that, but at what point did you actually realize that your Heavenly Father wanted to work with you in whatever you were putting your hand to?

Steven Thomas: Like I said, really from the very beginning. I just, I felt called. My whole goal is to bring God's kids back to him. So no matter what I'm doing, even when I was doing cabinets. In fact, I'll give you an example. So I started a company in the nineties called Vitae corporation. So Vitae is the Latin word for of life.

And so I started this company. It was a culture of life credit card. So it's like a visa. Had the hand from the Sistine Chapel, the finger of God and Adam, right? Touching. And and I raised money for pro life groups and, crisis pregnancy centers, things like that. And I did that and then in 2007, and then actually we got banned when banning wasn't cool. Cause we were pro life and the bank found out how pro life we were and they're like, Oh, we can't have this.

Jim: How pro life you were. You're pro life. You were just like partially pro life. You actually were a pro, full life pro life.

Steven Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And then in 07, I remember going on to Netflix. I'm going to pick out a movie and I saw this genre, right? I saw this, the gay and lesbian genre. And again we love all of our brothers and sisters. We don't judge at all, but I just thought, I don't want my kids to have to navigate this. Again, this back in 07.

And so I started a company called faith and family flicks. So we had all family friendly movie selections for them. And I've done things like that all my life. I started a software called Bizintro. And again, the whole purpose of it was about, it's about giving, it's about giving introductions to people.

So I've always tried to tie in my the crazy, the stuff that goes on in my head. I always tell people I have more ideas when I shower in the morning than most people have in a month. It's just the things just keep flowing and that's where the book came from.

Jim: So all of those things you just said, none of them were and write fiction, long form novels, adventure mystery murder novels. Where did you ever learn that you could write?

Steven Thomas: You know I've always had these stories in my head and I just never had the opportunity. Again, eight kids. Never really had the opportunity to sit down and just you know crank out a 500 page novel. I don't have your energy Jim, right?

Jim: You had eight kids. They literally suck battery life out of you every day.

Steven Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. They actually keep me young. So again, it's like everything's a gift, right? Everything is a gift. And this whole story of Catholic Joe, it really, it developed through the years.

So it started probably back in the nineties. I remember my wife and I, we used to do marriage prep. We taught natural family planning. I did chastity talks. And I remember back then that we always got the short end of the stick. We, sometimes couldn't get a room and it seemed like we were always getting pushed to the side.

And I was thinking to myself, we need like a superhero. Somebody could just kick behind and take names and that's where it first started. And then, again, that was like, 30 years ago, and so here we are now., Last December wrote it.

Jim: We're gonna talk about Steven's book, which is Catholic Joe Superhero. Listening audience, if you have, if you're just tuning in, maybe this is your first iWork4Him show, but if you've been listening at any length, you know that I like to read. I read a lot of books for the show.

I've read over 500 over the last 11 years for the show alone. But during the year, I usually read 20, 30, 40 fiction books, always of the Christian genre. In other words, they're not morally bereft, that they're actually something that's going to lift me up. Usually some scripture in there, but it's people's real stories.

I'm reading a Francine Rivers story right now. But when my friend Bob Lambert out of Chicago said listen, you gotta meet Steven Thomas. He's written this incredible book. I wonder if Bob even read it. That's what I want to know. But Steven sends me his book Catholic Joe Superhero. I'm like, okay, not a title I typically would have picked up in a store, but I read it because Steven had a phenomenal reference for me.

I picked this book up. I couldn't put it down. I read it in three days. This was an incredible story and it's fun and it's all about Joe Salvatore, who's a great Italian guy. I just love that. Cause I've got about a third of a, between a quarter and a half of Sicilian in me so all the last names were no big deal for me. But Joe Salvatore is a war hero. He's a special ops hero. He's a man hero. He's a husband hero. He's a dad hero. And he's a hero of the faith.

And I love Steven that you wrote this book about him and after Martha says something I really want to make sure we get into, let's talk about the book a little bit.

Martha: Well, I just I love it when we're talking about stories and things that we watch and one of the things that I was thinking about in my own life is I love to watch youtube when I'm cooking in the kitchen. That's like my thing.

And what happens is shows that I've subscribed to come up and are suggested over and over again. So I know about new episodes. So I just want to take a moment to say to everyone right now to go to YouTube and please subscribe to iWork4Him, iRetire4Him, and we have several other channels out there. And I'll put those in the show notes for you if you want them.

But I would love for you to subscribe to those so that they show up for you when you're out on YouTube and looking for something to watch. We do really have a lot of fun being able to look at our guests talk and interact. And I know that they'll pop up automatically, so you'll be catching up all the time on what's going on right here at iWork4Him.

Jim: Steven, Joe's a military veteran, special ops. He has eight kids at home. Gee, I wonder where that came from. (laughter)

Steven Thomas: I'm lazy, alright? I'm lazy.

Jim: He's got an incredible wife named Mary. What's your wife's name, Steven?

Steven Thomas: Mary.

Jim: Okay. There we go. (laughter)

This whole thing is military, special ops, eight kids at home, stayed married to an incredible wife, Mary. Seems a little farfetched yet you make Joe very real. Where did the idea of Joe come from? Because none of your work background said special ops, military veteran, that kind of stuff.

Steven Thomas: Yeah, it's a good question. I guess I tried to create the perfect man and the reason again, he's not perfect, right? Because he's got flaws. He went through his dark times and again, God pulled him out, God's grace. But I wanted to create the iconic man of what really, it's the type of person I would want to be like. And again, I felt like masculinity in general was taking a really big hit in society.

And so I felt like we needed this iconic figure of what beautiful masculinity looks like. Cause the thing that shocked the heck out of me was that I wrote it for men, but women love it. And I'm like, I was just baffled. And so I asked, I pinned down a few women. I said what do you like about it? And they said, we really like that it shows just a really awesome masculinity and there's something attractive about that.

Jim: Steven, it's Ephesians 5:25 lived out: husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Joe lives that out for Mary and his kids, and, at the end of that verse in verse 30, or the paragraph ends in 32, and it says, and wives submit to your husbands.

No wife ever would have a problem submitting to a husband who loves her like Christ loved the church. That's why Paul was writing it. But yet we just seem to have missed all of that. And that's why women love it because it's: I want a husband like that who will pray with me. .

Steven Thomas: And you're right. And who will I know who will live for my happiness and and live for my protection? And so yeah, I know that's a good point. It's a good point.

Martha: Okay, so speaking of marriage, Joe ends up having powerful influence over his brother Vinny in his life and in his marriage and he helps him to see the truth and actually fight for his marriage. Now I'm learning this from Jim because I haven't read the book yet. So I'm just being honest there but in a superhero book , why are we going the marriage mentoring route and the superhero ended up helping his brother?

Steven Thomas: You know, I think part of that comes from, I think it comes from my woundedness coming from divorce as a child. Again I call it the crucible of divorce. It's that silent stigma in life that we've all kind of grown comfortable with because it's so prevalent. And again, I've been I've tried to speak out as much as I could about marriage. If you can prevent one child having to cry themselves to sleep or one couple having to go through the pain of divorce, the book's a success.

But Yeah. Marriage, marriage really is.. So in our faith so John Paul II, the Pope, he said that marriage is the primordial sacrament. It's the beginning of it. It's the beginning of everything. So it's from marriage that everything kind of flows. And so if that, if marriage is distorted or broken, grace can't flow how God wants it to. So it's to me, it's the most important battle we have to fight in our day and age. If you fix marriage you fix 90 percent of all the world's problems.

Jim: Boy, there's a sermon you should get to preach on about a thousand sundays in about a million churches because truly strong marriages build strong families, build strong church communities, and strong church communities revolutionize the communities that they're in, and it changes a nation one community at a time. It's something we need to talk about, and I love the fact that Catholic Joe Superhero Is fighting for marriage. It starts with fighting for his brother's marriage, which was a hot mess, a great part of the story.

Martha: Don't give it away.

Jim: I'm not but it's not my cousin, it's my brother Vinny. So it's not my cousin Vinny, my brother.

All right, so Catholic Joe Superhero also uncovered some criminal unethical behavior in the leadership in the church. Are you writing on something that you uncovered or was that all just fiction?

Steven Thomas: No, I would say most the book is based on truth. I call it a fiction, right? But no I did a lot of research. So a gentleman that I know he actually hired X faithful FBI and actually to do a lot of research because back when they selected the last Pope, you had the, so the cardinals get together in a conclave, right?

Jim: Oh yeah. We've all seen on TV with the smoke coming out of the chimney and different colors.

Steven Thomas: Smoke means different things and so they were going on Wikipedia to get information on each other, and this guy was like, this is nuts. Wikipedia is a CIA tool or whatever, so anyway, so he made it his task to basically research all these different cardinals and the people in the church. And so he actually shared with me his wife made him quit after a couple years because some of the things he uncovered were just very disheartening.

And again, not that I want to dwell on the brokenness of the church because the church is very broken. Christ's bride is not as beautiful as we, as Christ wants her to be. In fact, so this nun who taught me in high school, she was very instrumental in my faith growth and development. She started reading the book and I talked to her and she had tears in her eyes. And she, once I started like talking about like corrupt bishops, she goes, Whoa, I can't endorse that.

But the thing is that, you've got to have prophets in the world and, when we're baptized. When we are baptized, we are anointed with oil and we are anointed priest, prophet and king. We are grafted into God's family, but we are anointed. We are meant to be prophets and priests and kings. And so that's where the whole notion of superhero. You talk about, why superhero?

Because we're all called, like you've mentioned earlier, we are all called to be superheroes by the merit of our baptism. And we are grafted into God's family. We've got the creator of the universe we can call Abba, Dada, Daddy or Father, the redeemer of the world we can call brother. And so we've got this unique, I would say power, because of that relationship that very few of us really understand. And that's why it had to be a superhero too.

Jim: We're talking with Steven Thomas who wrote this book called Catholic Joe Superhero. It's all about a guy who works with God. In so many situations, it is fun to read, practical as well. Which almost all Christian fiction is practical. You can learn a lot about God by hearing other people live out their stories, maybe in a fictional world, but there's always a lot of truth interlaced.

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Martha: I just, Steven, you walked across the United States with many others in the form of the shape of a cross. Tell us about that. Why did you do that?

Steven Thomas: So that goes back, so 18 years ago I was praying. And so I have this devotion to Jesus mother, right? I go, Mother, I go what's something we can do just for Jesus? And this whole idea of a Eucharistic procession across the country, so we had to basically to take our Lord across the country, reconsecrate it. That was 18 years ago. And they just had this big event in the church where literally they walked across the United States in the form of a cross. That was me. God put that on my heart. And so I brought that to the church in the United States. And so as a part of that, at the very beginning, and then, and a friend of mine who I brought on, he said, you know what, let's walk it.

So we had a relic of the true cross. So the cross that Christ died on that his blood covered, we had a little tiny sliver of that cross that we basically carried with us walking in the form of a cross across the United States, praying for our country, praying for marriage, praying for our church.

But just, sometimes we get, we feel like we have this helpless notion that what could we possibly do? And so we just felt like we wanted to go out and we wanted to do something radical and it was radical, and there were times where every step was just sheer agony. I'm not a marathon runner. I don't, you can't see the lower half of me. It's more like an hourglass than anything. But that, that whole trip was something that was it was so powerful.

And again, I felt like it really was the precursor to the book so I felt like it was from that trip and that journey and that persevering through that God gave me the grace, you know, to persevere through through writing the book.

Jim: And some people who haven't ever written a book don't know what that's really like. Because it's one thing to write the book the first time, and then you get with editors, and then it becomes no more fun. Because editors are just like, what are you thinking? Rewrite the whole thing. It's just, it's brutal. I didn't enjoy that part of the process. I enjoyed writing, but I didn't enjoy the editing part.

All right. Yeah. Steven, part of Catholic Joe's Superhero's story is your story, because you are in the battle today, fighting for marriage and fighting for men broken by divorce. Tell us about that.

Steven Thomas: Yeah. So that, that really is my white hot passion. So I was talking to a classmate from the seminary when I was there, he's actually an exorcist for the diocese of Indianapolis. And we're talking about how beautiful our faith is and that it makes, it gives meaning to suffering. And when I was a youngster, I suffered a lot through divorce.

And, again the crucible of divorce it was from that suffering again, it didn't turn me well. So I did turn to alcohol and things like that when I was younger but the wound has since been transformed by Christ, right? By his precious blood, right? He's transformed that wound into something that can bear fruit.

So now I take that and I got this white hot passion for marriage. I don't want anybody to have to go through that again. So really it was that experience really that fuels me to, and again marriage is just, it's just so important in our society. It's just it's so frustrating sometimes and we see people that just give up and that, that again, there's so much suffering because of it. I just feel called. I feel like God's called me to really be a champion for marriage.

Jim: I love it.

Martha: That's so good. And that really resonates with Jim and I, we believe that marriage is worth standing up for and fighting for, and people don't hear enough of that. And a lot of times it's great to hear that out of your wounds, some beautiful things have come that are helping next generations to come. How do you know that you're working with God in this battle? Joe knew he was working with God when he was taking down criminals. How are you working with God in the mentoring and the things that you're doing?

Steven Thomas: Good question, Martha. I guess we'd never really know, but I would say, I try to steep myself in prayer. So as a Catholic, I'll go to mass, I'll try to go to mass every morning. I'll do an hour of adoration. So I start the day with intense prayer. Again, as Catholics, I kneel before the tabernacle and I always, I try to renew my baptismal vows.

And I say, Jesus, you've anointed me priest, prophet, and king. We're in the same family. You're my brother. How are we going to yoke together to bring God's kids back to him? And so it's really that prayer and that desire that again, that desire God's given me. Everything is a gift, so he's given me that desire and it really is because of that prayer that I feel a sense of trust, confidence that I'm not going to be led in the wrong direction. Although I've made plenty of mistakes.

Jim: Yeah, Mary called. No, she called before the show. She called before the show and actually emailed me a list. It was quite lengthy, actually, but she asked that I not bring it up live on air.

 (laughter)

Steven Thomas: Good thing you have that, that one terabyte hard drive, that extra little bit of storage. Yeah. Good.

Jim: That was all the comments from the kids. Mary's list was fairly short.

Martha: I want to say something about this, because I think this is really relevant to what you were saying earlier about the nun who was concerned with what you were talking about was happening in the church and stuff, is the fact that we are all sinners saved by grace.

So we, when people say the church is a hot mess, yeah, it's full of humans, right? So we all fall short. And so I think that's really one of the many messages. Again, going back to Jim, how much we love fiction is that you can get these messages out of fiction without somebody going, You are crazy. You don't know what you're getting it in the story where someone else is learning. But the reality is that we do live in a messed up world that needs Jesus. And each one of us falls short.

Steven Thomas: Yeah, with fiction, it's like stealth evangelization because people, their guards are down, yes. And the thing is that they're enjoying the story, it's moving. And then you insert like a little conversation between Mary and Kathy where they're talking about, why don't you use contraception? And why, what's wrong with it?

And they have this conversation and you pose it in a way where you're not preaching. It's not a, it's not a catechism. It's not a textbook, but it's something that where you can again - I love the idea of stealth evangelization where you use, I call it the spiritual stiletto. They don't even know it, but the blade is going deep into their heart.

Martha: Yes. So many times you see it and I won't stay on this topic. I love talking about fiction, but it's like you are, your guard is down, like you said, and you all of a sudden go, you mean, people really can have a conversation like that? I never thought about that. I've never seen a healthy conversation like the one I just read in this book. Or a disaster of a conversation, depending on what you're trying to teach your readers.

Jim: There's demonstrations of both of those in the book, Catholic Joe Superhero.

Martha: Which is real life, gets you to see other vantage points and say, that's a, I really like how they handle that. Maybe I should try that in my own life. And that's the beauty of some tool like this, which I love that you're calling it stealth evangelism, because that's really what it is. And like you said, if one marriage is saved or one life is changed, it's worth it all. But I can tell you that it's also been great for other readers as well.

Jim: It was great. All right. So Steven, before we go, any final words? Any final... you said you had a question for Martha and I. Before we go, I want to give you a chance to ask that question. Didn't know if you wanted to do it while we're recording or after.

Steven Thomas: Sure. Yeah, no, actually, while we're recording, I wanted to ask you, what was the thing that struck you the most about the book? Because again my goal is to get into the person's heart. So what part of the book got into your heart?

Jim: It was the realness of the person because Joe didn't have all the answers. And he was seeking advice from elders. He was seeking advice from the spiritual leaders in his life. And he was seeking the Lord all the time. And he prayed with his wife. I love it.

Martha and I have prayed together since our very first date. Every day. And I know the power of that. And you put that in a superhero. It was fun, the stories he tells and all the adventures. But what I love is the fact that all came back down to, he honored his wife. And he honored his Lord in everything he did. He wasn't perfect, but he always went back to, God. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing here. Just tell me what to do.

It's that whole Psalm 119 :105 thing, a light into my path and a lamp under my feet. But back then, 3, 200 years ago, when David was writing that little lamp barely lit enough space on the ground at night for them to know where to put the next step. And that's what Joe was living, one step at a time led by the spirit of God. And so he was real to me because that's the kind of - I'm never gonna shoot a gun and you know do special ops. I got that hourglass figure like you as well. Or was it that was the penguin figure? Whatever it is but it's part of the hourglass the bottom part of the hourglass.

So I just love the realness of it and it was fun to see romance in the middle of it.

Steven Thomas: What did you think of that part? Because I had to make it tasteful but still real.

Jim: It was, it was great. I loved it. I also love the fact that Vinny and Kathy were at the end of their marriage rope. In fact once a woman is scorned like Kathy was, normally they never turn back. And yet because of the transformation of Vinny's life, because of Jesus, it gave their marriage a second breath and we've seen that. And it's real. It's not, it's messy. And the collateral damage on the kids, as you described, and Joe's niece and nephew, that's a real thing. But yet, when somebody's life is miraculously transformed by Jesus, which anybody who's a Jesus follower has had a massive transformation of their life, it's fun to read.

Steven Thomas: Good stuff. Good stuff.

Jim: Yes. Steven Thomas, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Steven Thomas: Sure. And if you want to get the book, can I share a website?

Martha: Yes, please.

Steven Thomas: Yes. If you want to get the book, you can go to catholicjoesuperhero. com. So it's catholicjoesuperhero. com. And we're working on the next book. So I think the next one is actually going to be better than the first one.

Jim: Excellent. That's a pretty, that's pretty big statement right there.

Martha: We'll put the link in the show notes and we are just excited to hear from others of what they think when they read it for themselves.

Jim: Absolutely. CatholicJoeSuperhero. com. Steven Thomas, we're grateful to have you here today, and we're grateful that you're a superhero who learned to work with God. Loved it.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!

8/14/24 - 2055: A Supernatural Journey in the Marketplace

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: As we continue on our 2024 series on I Work With Him stories from the workplace, from the workplaces of Jesus followers, we head off today to the southernmost nation of the continent of Africa. Bill Hollis joins us today from Johannesburg, South Africa. Bill and his wife Janet run a marketplace ministry called Ruach Ministries and host a weekly Facebook podcast called The Marketplace, A Kingdom Perspective.

This is released every Monday and it reaches sometimes greater than 70, 000 people. But Bill's story is anything but simple. His story of learning to work with him is more like a roller coaster with rose bushes to ride in. But I'll let Bill tell you his perspective. Bill's perspective on working with God is clear and concise now, and you can benefit from his wisdom without having to figure out on your own how to work with God in your work today. Bill Hollis, welcome to iWork4Him.

Bill Hollis: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful. It's a real privilege to be with you. I always enjoy your shows. Trust tonight is going to be another enjoyable evening.

Jim: Or day, depends on which time zone you're in. Bill, we always start off every show with just sharing about what's your Jesus story.

Bill Hollis: I don't have one of these, what's it, these stories where, you know, somebody has been broken and they've come to Jesus. I actually came to Jesus in the most, one of the best times of my life. I was a director of a company. I had all the frills of a director. I was living a very good life.

I had been divorced. I was dating a wonderful lady who became my wife later on, and I was working with a man who was a born again believer, and his wife was a born again believer. And little did I know, my girlfriend was also a backslidden Christian. So I had this theory in life that the only time - I was 35, by the way - I had this theory in life that the only time you went to church was for funerals and for weddings.

For me, if you mentioned the word church, it means nothing. God is always up to something, and if I look back in my life, He really had His hand on me. Somewhere in this journey, I got hold of this little book. It was called Life After Death. Yeah this secular guy, I start reading this book.

And it's all about people who died and had this near death that left their bodies either in accidents or operating theaters and left their bodies. And they all had the similar experience that this book was about 500 people they interviewed all over the world. And they all had a very simple experience. They all left their bodies, could see what was going on. They went into this tunnel of light and their whole life came before them. And then they came back and they saw themselves over there, wherever they were, and they got back into their bodies. I realized, man, there's more to life than just what we see.

We see life as just, through the normal eyes and we think life is like that, but there's a spiritual life that we are not aware of. And I think that's the greatest deception the enemy has, that he confuses people or deceives people to believe that there's no spiritual realm and there's no enemy and there's no devil. And so that kind of got me around to say there's more to life than just this lovely life I'm having. And so I, at the time I used to be one of these avid water skiers and also my girlfriend, she used to come and visit me. And I used to lie in bed on Sunday morning and she said, I'm going, all of a sudden she decided to go to church.

She was black spaxolin, and now she was going to church. So I used to lie in bed on a Sunday morning, and I'd say you can pray for me. And little did I know that when she was praying for me, in fact, God was at work. So slowly, she invited me to the church, and I went to a church service. It was a random Church service in a town called East London in South Africa.

And I'm not a half a person, I either do something wholeheartedly or I won't do it at all. And so I would go with her to the service and, they'd have an altar call and I think she used to think I wonder when this guy will ever give his life to the Lord. And obviously one day I actually gave my life to the Lord, and my whole world changed.

And I think if, for viewers, when you come to the Lord and you have a realization that the life you're living is not really what we need to be living. And so my whole life changed, and I started to read. She gave me this wonderful Bible, a spiritual filled Bible, and I picked it up and I started reading it from the cover, from the front to the back.

I read every scripture underlined and just was overwhelmed with the wisdom and what I was reading. Had been to Sunday school, sang the song, we love Jesus, I love Jesus, but never actually read the Bible in all these years. So it was like a new experience for me.

And from that day, my boss who was the MD at the time him and his wife were both born again and he used to share with me, so it was a God set up. God got me at 35. My only regret is I wish I'd started earlier.

Jim: Sure. Absolutely.

Martha: I love that you said it was a God setup, and it had to do with your work, and that God already had believers around you for that. So tell us then, on your work side, what led you to becoming a business guy? What was your path there?

Bill Hollis: I started as a young guy. I always wanted to be an engineer so I started at a engineering company and we were building tugs at those days. So I was a trainee engineer and then it closed. And then all of a sudden I was without a job. My father had died, so I needed a job. And so my ex girlfriend, one of my ex girlfriends, her father worked in the clothing industry. And said we're looking for a trainee manager. So I started in the age of about 20 in the clothing industry.

And that's how I got into the clothing industry. And that's how I started. And I had no vision to be a, to own my own business. Never had a vision. My vision was like, I could be a manager and then I was a manager and then I could be a factory manager, then I became a factory manager, then I could be a director. And then I became a director.

And so I progressed and then the one business I was with, they closed. And by chance I got into business of my own. Even that was a supernatural door that God had opened. I had a vision. I wrote down what I had and just trusted the Lord and knocked it with no finances.

I just knocked at every door I could with no surety ship, nothing. And finally the Lord led me. I went to somewhere where they were prepared to give me a substantial loan just based on my history and my ability. And they never asked for any charityship. And that's how I started.

Jim: So let's just ask this question. I've just finished reading your book, which is going to be released later this year, early next year. Were you an instant success?

Bill Hollis: No, not at all.

Jim: Not at all. And that's I wanted to leave it right there before we take a break because you had a lot of learning. It was a lifetime of learning to work with God and that's why we've got Bill Hollis joining us today from South Africa because, you know, it's funny because we've heard so many people say things like after 10 years, it was an instant success. One such company I can think of is Patriot Mobile.

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Go to patriotmobile. com forward slash iWork4Him and make the switch. We did, and we've never looked back.

Martha: That's so true, Jim. I'm so glad you shared all that. Bill, learning to work with God in business is quite a journey. And like Jim said, he got a peek through because he got to pre read your book. And so he knows this journey that what God is taking you through. But what was one of the first lessons that you learned about working with Him?

Bill Hollis: How I got to that, it's also another supernatural. Somebody put a DVD in my hand, and it was a Ed Silva's DVD, and it had a few testimonies of people that had, were working that had started Christ in their business. And at that time, my late wife was, she was in the ministry, and I was just waiting to go. And I had my own business for years, and I was just waiting to go into ministry.

And I'll never forget I got hold of this DVD and that DVD, it opened my eyes to a whole new world that I never knew existed. And that night, I got in front of the TV, I got on my knees and I repented and I said, God, I've been waiting to go into ministry and you've been waiting for me to go into ministry and start where I was. So that was the start of my journey of learning to be a marketplace minister.

When people ask me, who I am, I say I'm a marketplace minister. And God supernaturally connected me with Edsel Bosa and a team with grand power. And I went and felt, it's just a supernatural journey. I got there and I met and connected with him. And then the start of the journey of learning to work with God. And it's a very interesting journey. It's a long journey. Because when we partner with God in a business, then he's got to get the world out of us. And I had a lot of world in me.

 (laugher)

Jim: Let's talk about, let's talk about some of that world. Because again, I've read your 300 page book, so I got a little hint of this world stuff. Let's talk about hiring people. How can we work with God to hire people, the people that he wants us to hire? How do we learn that?

Bill Hollis: One of the things I've learned as we go on, the Bible says, make your request known to God. And the Lord knows everything, we partner with him in the business. And once I shared in the book, I was saying, God, I'm working with you. And then the Lord arrested me one day, said, No, you're not working for me, you're working with me. And so he knows our every need. And so we need to make that need known, Jim. Okay. I write down my, what I need, what stuff we need.

And then we also, we have a prophetic ministry. My wife is a prophet and we have a prophetic team. And so we just trust to send us the right people and God sends the right people for the right thing. I'll tell you a short story, which is not in my book. We had friends of ours and she was hiring staff and the lady didn't pitch up and she was so distraught because she had a company that leased buildings and also was building and she said, this lady led her down.

And I said, I never forget saying to her, just what are you worried about? God can send you somebody from Cape Town. And lo and behold, two months later, she phoned me. She said, buddy, you won't believe it. I said I can believe it. She said a lady applied from Cape town, assistant job, and she's got exactly the qualifications I need. She's done building and she's done letting of property. So God can send us wherever we want, but we need to seek him first. And we need to put that request before him and trust him to lead us to the right person. And they'll come.

Jim: Okay. Did you ever hire the wrong person when you thought you were hearing from God, but maybe hired the wrong person?

Bill Hollis: I once, it's in my book. I had fun. We have fun with it. Janet is a prophetess, so she's traveled internationally. I asked to be on an interview with one lady and I interviewed the lady and thought she was the right person. And then she actually completely bluffed me. And she made out that she was this perfect person. And then I had to try and get rid of her. And it was such a difficult thing. I remember I looking back now, God showed me, sometimes God sends us people that we need to correct. And sometimes God, with that, we need to build up and to encourage, but sometimes God sends us people that He wants to use to correct us.

And the journey started with a lady. I tried to fire her, but her daughter worked for attorneys. And no matter what I did, she came up with some story. I reckon it brought all the demons out of me. Every demon that I had came out because I just, so frustrated I couldn't get rid of her. But finally, she left. And so I learned a lesson that God will sometimes send us people that He wants to use to change us. We always think it's only for our benefit, but many times it's for His benefit.

Martha: It's amazing to hear your story, stories, and I feel bad because we're focusing on some things you had to learn the hard way, but isn't that part of why you probably even write your book, right? To help people, show them what God has taught you. And I know that you have a lesson that you've learned about partnering with a non believer as you were learning to work with God. Tell us a little bit about that.

Bill Hollis: I teach people that we need to understand that partnership in business is like a marriage. Spiritually, it's like a marriage and if you partner with the wrong person, every value that they have on you, everything that they carry will come up on you. And there's also a clash in the spirit. Yes, I had some very good partners, but I also learned one partner, I had everything. I thought everything was going well. He was a Buddhist. We were going to set up this partnership, and it looked, everything looked rosy, and everything looked well.

 But God had another idea. Now, sometimes God protects us from ourselves. I look at my life, and I look back, and I think so many wrong decisions I made, but God and His mercy and His grace always protected me, and He even delivered me from the issues that I faced. And I tried to work with Him, and it just turned out God put a block there.

And eventually, this whole thing fell apart. He accused me of being deceitful and lying and all kinds of things. And I never forget going to his place one day, he was standing at his door with his hand behind his back, and he was screaming at me to get off his property because he had owed me some money, and I need to find out that he had a gun behind his back.

He staffed home, he had a gun behind his back. So we need to know that when we partner with people, they need to have the same values. Okay, and not just get involved with every person that comes along, because that sounds like a good idea, but it's never a God idea.

Jim: Learning to hear God's voice in all of this. I know that's, you had 50 years of really learning to hear God's voice in your work in your book that I mentioned, what's the title of your book and when do you think it'll be released?

Bill Hollis: The title of the book is A Supernatural Journey in the Marketplace: Money, Marketplace, and God. I'm looking to release it by the end of the year, it should be finished. Just trying to get everything together. But people say to me I've got a Christian business. There's a big difference between a Christian business and a kingdom business. And see, in a Christian business, you do business by the book. You don't steal, you don't swear, you don't do all of these things. And that's great. And we compliment you if you're doing, you have a Christian business. But we need a kingdom business because a kingdom business has a king. And his name is Jesus, and we need to be hearing from him, and he's our CEO. There's a book I've got here somewhere in these books is God is my CEO.

We need to know he's the CEO and we partner with him in business. And the thing is, how do you work with somebody that you don't know? How do you work with somebody that you never hear? And so the question is, we need to know when we do a Christian business, that's great, but a kingdom business is supernatural. You'll see supernatural signs, wonders, and miracles. You'll see the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in your business, but it means that you have to learn to hear from Him, because that's a key. You have to be able to hear from the boss, okay, your boss, and say, Lord, please lead me, Holy Spirit, lead me and guide me.

Holy Spirit's the most awesome. He's awesome. He's our teacher. He's our guide. He's our paraclete. He's the one with the power. He will show us. So we need to develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit, to be able to hear from God clearly. And in the early years, I always say, I started journaling, I would just say about 90 percent was me and maybe five, 90, maybe 10 percent was God. But over the years, over many years, it's become more of God and less of me. And so it's a journey.

Life is a journey. That's why I called it a supernatural journey, because life is a journey. And it's a journey listening, learning to listen to God because God can speak to everyone. He's speaking to everybody. It's just, we need to learn how best we hear.

Jim: So the books gonna be called the supernatural journey in the marketplace, a supernatural journey in the marketplace. What I love about Bill's book is the first couple hundred pages is Bill's story and how up and down, trial and error, and learning to work with God. And in the last hundred plus pages, he shares all the wisdom that he has garnered from those experiences in detailed fashion of what does it look like to run a kingdom organization. So it's, I highly recommend it. The stories were fun to read. I felt bad for Bill because he laid it all out there honestly, and he had some rough years.

But I would have loved to seen the little car that you had to drive though. You talked about the cars, how before, before things were going really well, he was driving a super sweet car and then all of a sudden he wasn't driving such a sweet car. Like in the United States, you're driving a Cadillac and all of a sudden now you're driving a Metro or a smart car, something like that.

All right. We'll be right back with Bill. Martha, you wanted to share something?

Martha: Just what you said, Jim, that Bill has gained so much wisdom that he's willing to share with the readers in this upcoming book that we're talking about. And we just really love sharing wisdom as well.

And one of those nuggets has to do with SaferNet VPN. And at iWork for him, we rely on SaferNet to protect our computers, whether we're at our home office, or on the road somewhere or in the office space. Wherever we are, SaferNet is a service not just for businesses, but also for our family. So their VPN, their virtual private network, is easy to set up with controls for the family and employees. And Jim, you know all about the controls, but it's wonderful.

Jim: What are you saying? I'm a control freak?

Martha: No, but this is your world. But SaferNet is just really set apart for its great pricing and its excellent security. So you can check them out. And I just want to encourage everyone. This is not, a lot of times we think it's just for business. It's for your home and all your personal devices as well. SaferNet. com

Jim: Bill, before we get into the last question about the stuff that God has you doing on the internet on a weekly basis, I want to hear from you because most of the people listening today are on the other end of the planet from you and they don't really know what God is doing in your country South Africa. Tell us what God is doing in South Africa right now.

Bill Hollis: We've just had an election where the ruling party has been shared politically. And my wife leads a prayer, whole prayer movement for South Africa. And we really prayed. And I think this is, can also encourage you in America to really pray. And the country's really been praying that we needed a change because the ruling party has been in power for 30 years. And just like all these others that take over, they really ruin the country. But God has supernaturally intervened. He's heard our prayers. My wife prophesied five years ago that there would be a shared government. And so what's happened in this last election, the ruling party got less than 50%, only got 40%.

So today we have a government of national unity where they've invited all the other parties together and they're sharing the portfolio. It is just exciting for our future. God answers these prayers. Even at the last minute, my wife also prophesied that we were praying that they would split the ruling government. And in the last three months, it looked like it was impossible. And God split the ruling government and one part broke away and they took 14 percent of the ruling party. So it took them from 54 percent down to 40%.

And so God is at work. I encourage you in America, pray for your country - pray. God is at work. He can do it. It's just that we mustn't be apathetic about it.

Jim: Good word.

Martha: Very good word. Because so many times it does seem like there's nothing we can do when the very most important thing we can do is to pray. So I hope that the listeners hear that word of wisdom from you right now. They don't have to wait for your book to hear that great wisdom from you.

So talk to us about your thriving online ministry that you're doing called The Marketplace. Tell us about it.

Bill Hollis: Being in the prophetic, we meet a lot of prophetic people. So we, I met David McDonald and he gave me a prophetic word. He said, God wants you to do cyber. And at that time we, we had a training school and in COVID we had to close it.

So I used to do marketplace Mondays and we used to have about 30 or 40 people attend, and so we closed it. And Janet and I decided we'll just start something on the web. And instead of being in our auditorium, we would just go on the web. So it was just in COVID. And then I got this word that God said I must go on cyber. So I thought cyber, I didn't even know what cyber is. I'm a lot older than I look. So I Google cyber, I need to find out the internet. And so I realized God wanted me to go into the internet.

So one night I was praying and I got the word hootsuite. Didn't know what it was. I downloaded it. I can't even tell you what I did today, but all of a sudden I was getting friend requests from all over the world, from Pakistan, South America. In three months, I had 5, 000 friends. Those days I was foolish. I just liked everybody. I took them on as friends. And within three months I couldn't take any more friends. And then I started doing this same thing I was doing in the auditorium, I started to put a program on once a week, I would put it once a week, and just sharing my stories and sharing stuff that the Lord had shown me over the years, dealing with the spiritual side.

And many people, you've got lots of books about leadership and everything, but many times they don't deal with the spiritual side that we face, and also soul issues which impact our work life. I'll give you an example, like a spirit of Mammon. If you don't understand the spirit of Mammon, you get caught up in it and you don't even know it. Many people don't even realize that they've been caught up in the spirit of Mammon. So there's a spiritual aspect of it. So that's what I started teaching. And then I would just decide I'll promote it a little bit now.

I'll promote it and it's 500 rand, which is about 25 dollars, which that's not a lot of money. Okay. And it's then all of it started, I would get 20, 000 views and 30, 000 views and it's grown and grown. And God has done it. I did nothing. I can't claim anything there. I take none of the glory. It's all the Lord. He does it. And this last one I did was 113, 000 views, and it's about 10, between 10 and 15, 000 playthroughs, because that's, for me, an important one. Viewing is one thing, but playthrough is important. So God is giving His message out, and I only advertise to Africans.

I don't go anywhere else. That's my market. That's my target. And God has done something supernaturally. Even one day I decided, I felt the Lord wanted for my journaling to put a little, these little daily posts on. So I used to post a little daily post. Used to get excited, a hundred thousand.

I'm fantastic. A hundred thousand, that people repost it and then get excited. One day, one post that was shared and reviewed reached 843, 000 people. Now, I could never have done that. It was only God that did it. I was just being obedient. I had to learn a new skill. I got a vMix program. I do my own programs. And I had to learn, at my age, I had to start learning all a new skill.

But God, when God has something and He's spoken, I can just encourage the viewers, when God has given you a word, just pursue it. All He's looking for is somebody that's willing to say, yes, Lord, I'll do it. And He will do the rest. He does. He only needs us, faith without works is dead. So we need us to do some faith. And I also got in my book, just the story, how it was hijacked.

Jim: So you keep mentioning that you're old, but you look about 60. How old are you really?

Bill Hollis: I turned 75 in last month, and two weeks ago. Yeah.

Martha: Happy birthday. I can't believe you called him out on that.

Jim: No, I know. Okay. I already knew the answer but what I want is that people understand, listen. Bill is starting - this is just a couple years ago during COVID. He started this. So he's in his 70s. So this is to the iRetire4Him audience that listens to iWork4Him.

God's not done with you yet. It's just a different phase of life and if Bill can start an online ministry to the continent of Africa in his 70s and reach hundreds of thousands of people, God can use you right where you're at as well. Bill, just really quick, what do you think the biggest draw is for the people that are following you and the materials that you're teaching?

Bill Hollis: I think I teach something different to everybody else because you can get many, I've done lots of extensive reading and you can get lots on leadership and you get lots on how to walk out our Christian business. But what I share is the issues that I've struggled with and because my mission now is to help others that they can also identify.

So in my book, I'm pretty open and very vulnerable, but it's to help others in a lot more detail than most people would put, but so that people could learn from it. When I share these things, and I deal with, spirit, like a principality of self. Nobody teaches on a principality of self, and nobody teaches about the orphan spirit. These are the things, and how it impacts the marketplace because we see it in the church, but we take ourselves from the church and we go to work.

Martha: That's right.

Bill Hollis: And so whatever we're dealing with goes with us to work. And so it's going to manifest in our work. So these are the things that I teach and that has helped. And I think that's why I've got lots of people say, I'm watching you from England. Someone says, I'm watching you from Australia, but the issue is not really me. It's really about the Lord helping others that from my journey, they can learn how to grow and they don't have to go through 50 years of hell, like I've been.

Martha: Well and we're grateful for that. And here's an opportunity for you. I would love for you to share one thing that you wanna say to the global audience that's listening about working with God in business. What is that one thing you'd say to them right now?

Bill Hollis: The one thing I would say, get to know the Holy Spirit. Cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit and learn to hear the voice of God for yourself. Because you want to hear Him. You want to listen to the Master. Just like Jesus, you want to be led by the Spirit of God. And when you're led by the Spirit of God, you'll see things move supernaturally. You then become a natural supernaturally. Okay? Because that's the key. Listen to the voice of God.

He's wanting to talk to every business person, whether you are a worker or whether you are a owner. He's wanting to speak to you and if you would listen and if you would learn, and there's many programs that you can hear today, going on the internet, and hear how to hear the voice of God. But that is the key to your success, is listen to the Voice of God.

Jim: Bill Hollis, thanks for being on iWork4Him today. Appreciate it.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ Followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field. But ultimately, iWork4Him.

8/7/24 - 2054: Be a Catalyst of "With"

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement. And I'm your host, Jim Brangenberg. Today, Martha's taking the day off with our granddaughter, Ada. And our mission, just remember, is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. But what does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

iWork4Him. I've said that one word - yeah, it's one word the way I write it - probably a million times. I figure even today as I've typed it and said it over a hundred times, and if you multiply that by 11 and a half years of days, which is 4, 198 days, that would almost be a half a million just right there.

It's not just an organizational name. It's a statement of faith and it's a way of living, but it's not enough. Is it where God wants us to stop in the progression of living out our faith at work? No, for me, it started when I realized that God loved my work, that my work mattered to God, that my work was my ministry place and my mission field.

I lived out Colossians 3:23 and 24: whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

But is it enough? Am I there? I'll tell you, no, again. About nine years ago, I interviewed a man who told me that I had an unfair advantage at work because of the Holy Spirit living in me. But how do I unleash that unfair advantage, which will be to the advantage of everyone working with me? That's what the unfair advantage is. It's the advantage of everybody, but it takes another shift in their thinking. A shift to with. From working for God to working with God.

Shae Bynes has been speaking about this concept for a while now and at the US Christian Chamber Expo in April - go online to uschristianchamber. com; you should join that organization today - she brought it up again. So I invited Shae Bynes to join us for a conversation today to talk about a shift to with. Shae Bynes, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Shae Bynes: Why, thank you, Jim. It's always good to be hanging out with you.

Jim: I hope you feel that way at the end of this conversation 'cause you know I'm already animated as we've had a lot of pre-conversation today. Shae, here's the deal. God has had you doing a lot of things in the last decade. At what point in time did you see your heart move and your mind shift from working for him to working with him?

Shae Bynes: This happened about 12 years ago, and I was actually sitting at church, and our pastor gave a message on Matthew 11, verse 28 through 30. And I'm just sitting there listening to it, and this is the scripture: that, Jesus is saying come to me all of those who are weary. He talks about how his yoke is easy and his burden is light. It's like that group of scriptures. But, that particular day, he read it in the Message Bible, and I'd never heard it before.

And it says, are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you will recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me, work with me, watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you will learn to live freely and lightly.

And Jim, when I heard that, it was like, it hit me like water and lightning at the same time. . And as someone who was previously very achievements driven, performance driven, and all of those things and yet a Christian, it was just hitting me hard.

Wait, there's something missing here. It's that with factor. It's walk with me, work with me, keep company with me. And so it was in that moment, I was like, I'm having a God encounter in the middle of church hearing that.

Jim: Wait a minute, you had a God encounter at church? That's an amazing idea. I love that. Okay, so God makes it clear to you that he wants you to work with him, right? Before that point you'd never ever understood that before?

Shae Bynes: I didn't have a grid for that. I didn't have a concept of that. And part of that is because, Jim, my upbringing in church... I had a lot of Bible stories. I knew God loved me. I knew Jesus loves me. I knew all of that. So I knew about the Father. I knew about Jesus. I didn't know about the Holy Spirit. I didn't know about the Holy Spirit who's there to lead me, to guide me in all truth, being the ultimate teacher. I just didn't know. So then, so I grew up in that church environment, and then in my college years, I was at churches that were, like, spirit filled, charismatic churches.

They were all non denominational, but that's when I was seeing some different things going down in church that I didn't quite understand, but it always happened inside the church building. It still wasn't like - we weren't talking about walking with the Lord every day and all the things. And so I had two contexts. One, which was people say jokingly, Father, Son, and Holy Bible, but that was pretty much what it was like for me. That was like, that was the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Bible. And then it was like, Oh, there's a Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is about just these interesting things that happen inside of this church building. It seems weird to say this now, but it was.

Jim: No, it doesn't seem weird. Cause I, I never went to a church where any weird things happened inside the church. So I certainly wasn't expecting them to happen outside of the church. Follow Jesus. He made it possible to have this intimate relationship with our heavenly father. And God wants us to live it to the fullest. He wants, Jesus came to restore that which was lost in the garden where Adam and Eve walked with God. They talked with God. They worked with God. As Adam named all the animals, God brought all the animals to him. They worked together to get it done. They had flourishing, mental flourishing and physical flourishing and spiritual flourishing. And that's what Jesus came to restore. And the supernatural is part of that.

Shae Bynes: It is. So it was just interesting that I didn't have a grid for it. But it was a combination of my spiritual upbringing and then also culturally. You think about, American culture, which is very much rooted in independence and work hard and all of those things. So I had like my achievement oriented, independent kind of thing going on with a lack of understanding of my relationship and what it means to abide in him and him abide in me. And so those things together just was like a me working and doing things primarily in my strength. And then eventually also saying I want to do that for the glory of God.

When I stopped compartmentalizing my life, yes, of course I want everything in my life including my work to be for the glory of God, but I was still doing it in my own strength.

Jim: But you know by doing for the glory of God instead of with the glory of God. The faith and work movement now is you know it's really a hundred years old because CBMC is almost a hundred years old, but you know as it's picked up pace since the mid 70s, early 70s, it's always been about faith and work, and it's always been about working for God.

 The first time I realized that I could work for God, that I didn't have to quit my job to go work in a church I was, that was astounding. I was so excited. It wasn't until I started meeting people like you where I realized my faith had so much more power and that God wanted so much more for me. He didn't want me to be striving. He didn't want me to be exhausted. He didn't want me to be stressed. Yes, I'd read the scripture: Come to me all you are weary and heavy laden and I will give you yeah, I mean I get that. I'm a business guy and I'm used to being weary and heavy laden. So I thought that was a natural thing.

Jim: You're a businesswoman. You know that stuff. The movement, in my opinion, when I heard you talk in April at the U. S. Christian Chamber Expo, it reminded me of a conversation where God had started talking to me last December saying, we need to shift to with. I need people to learn to work with me. I have all the answers. I have the exact pace people need to work at. I just want people to work with me. Have them, it's really an experiencing God kind of concept when you think about it. See where God is working. Go work with him. Instead of saying, God, here's what I'm going to do. You want to come over here? Because this would be really cool if you could just work with me over here.

We would say that we're all in the faith and work movement. In reality, how are we going to help the faith and work movement shift to with?

Shae Bynes: I think when it comes to intimacy with God and all of these conversations, it starts with us. Kingdom culture starts within us before it can be multiplied and expressed through other people. So more of us have to individually make the shift in order to then have that message that then gets replicated in other people, because if you can't do that with authenticity, it falls flat.

So it comes from within. And then those who are catalysts to then bring that to others. And so to me, I just look at myself as a catalyst of this message of with. And so I have helped a lot of people in the last 12 years transition to with. And I believe that all of them then also become catalysts of helping others to make a shift to with.

Maybe not in the way that I do it. Because I'm called to lead a movement connected to it, but for them, just in their every day, with other business owners that they're around, just being able to share the message or share a mindset shift or, go read this book, Grace Over Grind, whatever.

But I feel like it starts with each individual and then it gets multiplied to the people around us. But if we don't have more people who are at the leadership level, at the movement level, that have made that transition, that slows down the multiplication.

Jim: So many different ways I want to go with this conversation, but I want to take a moment just to thank SaferNet.

SaferNet's been a supporter of iWorkRim for a long time, and SaferNet supports safety on your computer by website filters, internet filters, a VPN. You could go into a hotel lobby, connect up to the Wi Fi and not worry about somebody hacking your computer. I encourage you, we use SaferNet on all of our devices at iWork4Him. I encourage you, check it out online at safernet. com, safernet. com.

About six months ago, no, maybe four months ago, I think it was March. I have no idea. When you connected me to, a guy named Bill Hollis out of South Africa. And I just finished reading his book. It's in rough draft form right now. I don't know if he's given you a copy to read yet, but I just finished, I'm almost done reading. I actually haven't got to page 368 yet, but it's really all his story, about here's all the ways I have tried to work with God and I've screwed it up along the way. It's just great.

I've never heard those stories from Shae Bynes, But, and honestly, I was looking through my library going, how come I don't have a copy of Grace Over Grind on my library shelf? How come I have not ever read that book? And so I'm embarrassing admitting I've never read that book. And I'm sorry. But I want to hear your story of how you've tripped up trying to figure out how to work with God.

Shae Bynes: Sure. So we can go back. By the way, I still trip up because this is a journey of growing in him. We go from one level of glory to the next, right? So this is not, there's no, I've made it. There's no, I walked this thing out in perfection. So let's be clear about that up front.

Jim: Your husband Phil called right before the show and said, believe me, if she says she's got it figured out, no way does she haven't figured out. He already called. It's already, it's on record.

 (laughter)

Shae Bynes: I want to make sure that was clear. Okay. But I'll tell you about some of the beginning stages for even beginning to reorient myself in a different posture, right? So for me, the beginning was when I was like, all right, Jesus, show me this. What does this even look like?

For me, the beginning part was around really cultivating just like this awareness of his presence and cultivating a confidence that I do hear his voice. And so for me, that looks like some new ways of engaging God. Previously when I would read the Bible, I would read Oh, I'm reading the Bible in a year. Again, going back to the achievement thing. I'm reading it, reading it, and reading it the next day. Then read the next day. It was like for the reading sake, and I started saying, okay, as I was reading and I'd say, okay, Holy Spirit, help bring understanding to this to me. Bring understanding to what I'm reading to me. Or I said, where, where should I read today?

There'll be times where I would camp out in a chapter like for a long period of time. And I was asking him to show me things beyond the words that are on these pages. I wanted to engage in conversation. So that was one thing. Then I was like, okay, as it relates to my work, I'm a strategist. That's just, that's how I'm wired. And so instead of me having all of my strategy figured out and running through the races, I started surrendering my to do list to God. And I started asking him questions. I'd be like, Lord, these are my thoughts, but what are yours?

I said, God, what's your heart concerning the people I'm serving? What's your heart concerning this work? And I just started engaging God in different ways. And as I was doing that, I was realizing, wow, I was getting ideas. And some thoughts and some things that were like, ah, that wasn't my idea. At least I don't think that was my idea.

And I would start walking it out in faith because some people will say, Jim, how do you know that was God? I didn't know for sure. But the demonstration of my faith was that I was willing to take a step forward to see. Let me see. Let me test that out. And so I started experimenting with walking that out when I'd ask God for thoughts around things or around things around my work.

And I was just like, even when it would be something that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I'd be like, let me just take a step in that direction and see what happens. Now, this is many years ago, right? But God was so faithful to confirm as I was moving and so that was how I was like exercising the faith muscle, to say I hear from God and he like he speaks, and he brings understanding, he brings strategy. He's the one who makes this work come alive in my every day, including this work. And I just started walking that out in practice, which also means that I screwed some stuff up. That was probably not what he said. And that didn't quite work out the way I thought.

Jim: Hang on. I know you can preach for 30 minutes. I've heard it. You've got to take a deep breath though. Give me a chance.

So how do you know when it's not from God? What is your mechanism now today in 2024 to know, yep, that was an idea, that was from Shae? That wasn't from God. What is your mechanism for verifying?

Shae Bynes: This is also not 100 percent foolproof.

Jim: We're not talking about a formula. I'm just asking, how does God work it with Shae?

Shae Bynes: Yes. So one of the things I learned over time, so 12 years ago, I'd say my posture was, I was looking, it was almost like I was looking for peace or people like, follow the peace, look for the peace, all of those things. And then over time I realized that peace resides on the inside of me and I need to recognize when peace escaped me, different orientation.

And so what would happen is that instead of me making decisions, like looking for, Oh, looking for this external peace or something, like looking for this, searching for this peace, and I started changing my reorientation because he says, delight yourself in me. I'll give you the desires of your heart, as I was growing in intimacy with God.

And I had that awareness of his peace with me. I started realizing when things were like, ah, doesn't, even though this thought's coming and I'm taking these steps, something's not right about this. Something's, I need to sit, I need to slow down on this thing. I need to seek God around this thing a little bit more. That type of thing. So it was like our internal, like you can't - Jim, people look for formulas and you can't formulize intimacy with God. You can't shortcut intimacy with God. You can't be like, Oh, how do I pass the test of intimacy with God? And you can't bypass that to work with him.

And so it takes the willingness to spend time with him, to take some risks, to learn some things and walk it out. That's what I've done. I can't fast forward that for somebody, but I can say, I can give them the confidence to say that as you do and as you walk that out with him, you will grow in more confidence as you walk it out. But ask me whatever you want.

Jim: I want to go back cause I don't feel like you answered my question the way I was looking for it. I was looking for a different answer. When you're hearing something from God, so you think you're hearing something from God, do you have. Intercessors that you convene with going, are you hearing the same thing or what are you hearing?

Do you go to Phil and go, what are you hearing? How do you get verification that it wasn't just your head coming up? 'cause you're a creative, and you're also, you're a visionary, so you're always coming up with the new ideas. So that's naturally.

Shae Bynes: Actually, I'm not, by the way.

Jim: Oh, you're not?

Shae Bynes: That's my husband. I'm an implementer.

Jim: Oh, you're an implementer. Okay. That's fine.

Shae Bynes: Yeah. I'm a strategy and implementation. My husband's the visionary.

Jim: So you never come up with new ideas?

Shae Bynes: Of course I come up with that.

Jim: Okay, That's my point. Thank you very much. You just wasted 30 seconds of the interview.

 (laughter)

Jim: All right. But my question is - you guys, Shae and I have been friends a long time, and this is a conversation we're having a lot of fun with. We're talking with Shae Bynes. Check her out online. ShaeBynes. com. ShaeBynes. com. You'll want to check out all of her resources. And she's the one that originally Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur, check that out. She speaks. I mean she consults. She does it all. Shae, I just want to know how do you verify that you've heard from God?

Shae Bynes: Yes. Okay. So you'd ask me specifically about, do I go to my husband or I go to, it depends. Because I'm not going to go to somebody else to confirm every single thing all the time. But when there are things that have significant ramifications, like right now, just this past week, there was something that I need to make a decision on that was very significant. It was going to be a longer term commitment to this decision, and I didn't have, I was just like, there's something around this that I'm just having an issue with.

And I'm not sure, I think this is possibly something God's showing me, but I'm not quite sure. And so what do I do? I have my, I have a few advisors in my life. My husband is one of them, but I have a few advisors outside of my husband that I tend to go to say, Hey, this is something I've been, this is something that's coming up for me. This is what I've been thinking about. I feel like this is what God's showing, but I'm not quite sure. And I just asked for some wisdom on it. Or I ask them to pray with me about it. It depends on what the situation is and who the person is I'm talking to. I just did this. So yes, I absolutely do that, but I don't do that for every single decision.

Some of these things is just, I just walk it out. I take some steps and I'm engaging God as we go. So it just depends on how significant that decision is.

Jim: And it would seem to me that the deeper your relationship with your heavenly father, the more you know his voice and you're like, okay, I got it.

Shae Bynes: That's right. And that, by the way, took time, which is why I had that sideline rant. Because business owners are always looking for just no, but what's that quick thing that does it? Intimacy takes time.

Jim: That's why Abraham and Sarah didn't have a son when Abraham was 75. He was a hundred because it took 25 years for Abraham to hear the voice of the Lord. And then another 17 till he was tested when God, or whatever it was - 13 to 17, when he said, I want you to sacrifice your son to me. And Abraham knew it was God's voice. You've got to learn to hear God's voice. Then you can execute on the things he's asking you.

Shae Bynes: Can I say something?

Jim: Of course you can.

Shae Bynes: And the thing is that I tell people, even now walking this out for the last 12 years, I'm not like, Oh, I a hundred percent know, and I wait till I get this hundred percent clarity before I move. No. To me, the life of faith is that there's always this mystery. So I don't expect to have this hundred percent clarity. Oh, I just know this. No, I'm leaving space for what I do not know all the time. So when people are like, Oh, how clear are you? I'm like, I don't need a hundred percent clarity. I got about 60 percent and that's enough for me to keep moving. I got 70%, right?

And I think it's important for people to know that because I think we put these expectations on our ability to hear and respond that we get stagnated by, but I just don't 100 percent know. But what's the life of faith? It's, there's a corresponding action. So how do you know? How do you grow in confidence? By actually walking it out.

Jim: Such great words. And Shae, I love them. And let's take it down just a notch for a second. You're a wife and a mom of three. How are you working with God in those areas?

Shae Bynes: Yes, so I'll give you just super practical examples when it comes to parenting. So I have three kids from three different generations. My oldest daughter is 23.

My middle is 16. My baby is 7. Okay, so big gaps. So they live extraordinarily different lives. So parenting them is very different. A conversation with my middle daughter. There are times where my middle daughter might have an issue around something and I'm having to actually seek God around how do I respond to what my child just said?

I'm thinking I need to address this, but Lord, how do I address it? Because how I address things with my oldest daughter does not work with my middle daughter. There's things that my middle daughter, each child has their own design. And there's things that they have that are God things, but they get out of whack where they're not learning how to direct them.

And so I have to say, I don't want to break the thing that God put inside of her. I want to nurture it. And so I have to seek God for strategy on. And just sometimes just in the middle of a conversation, I'm pausing and asking the Lord, do I deal with this? What do I say? Like in real time, same thing with my husband, same thing with my husband.

We'll be in a conversation. And sometimes I call it heated fellowship. He thinks that's funny. Heated fellowship, conversation around something. And I'm pausing and I'm like, Lord, is this conversation for now? Is this conversation for later? What am I, what do I need to shift? What am I not seeing? I'm literally in conversation with my husband and also having conversations with the Lord.

So he will in real time guide and direct. So it is, it's the with God life. So it's not just in the morning praying for my children. Of course, praying for my children. But also while I engage my children, He's right there with me. He has shut my mouth more than once or said don't deal with that, I've got that. Or here's something that you do need to deal with or telling me something that she doesn't know that I know. And they're like, let me know some information I need to know that I wouldn't have known if God didn't show me and then I go and deal with it, right? And so it's that just that life in him. Abide in him as He abides in us.

Jim: I would say that the large, very large majority of the body of Christ in America, we'll just keep it in the United States of America, has no idea how to walk with God, how to work with God, how to live with God, how to flourish with God. How do we tell them to get started?

Shae Bynes: That's why I go back to that beginning: do something different with God. You might want to start with how you engage the scripture. Read the word with the living word, right? So as you're reading that scripture, ask God some questions. Ask Holy Spirit to illuminate some truth for you in the words that you're reading. Actually take something that you wouldn't normally talk to God about, something that might feel like, oh, that's small, I've got it, and actually seek God around that. Ask God some new questions. Just to engage differently begins to start to shift you.

Jim: I love that. Any final thoughts? Any final thoughts on the whole shift to with?

Shae Bynes: I really feel like, I used to think many years ago that this was simply an invitation to God's best. It is an invitation to his best, but I believe it's also the life that we're called to. We are wired, we are designed, we are created to abide in him. Jesus said so himself. And so for anyone who's hearing this and is yeah, that's interesting, Shae, Jim, okay, but eh.

This is actually what you're called to. If you are a citizen of the kingdom of God, and going to be an ambassador, a kingdom ambassador as well, then, and we're really going to release the glory of God and the goodness of God to the world around us, we've got to do that with him. So I say embrace the invitation and embrace the reality that you were designed and built and wired for this and get ready for a wild and crazy and amazing adventure with God.

Jim: Wow. Shae Bynes, great conversation. We could do this forever, as she knows. You guys don't know this, but I would encourage you to check out Shae online, ShaeBynes. com S H A E B Y N E S dot com. Lots of great resources. You got a conference coming up? Bring her in. She'll blow the minds of everybody there.

Shae, thanks for being here today with us. Appreciate it. Us, me, myself and I, because I'm used to having Martha right here. Like it's the first show I've done without Martha in a really long time. But thank you, Shae.

Shae Bynes: We love you, Martha.

Jim: Yes, we do. We do. Now, just want to remind everybody, we do have a one minute Power Thought that we produce every day, every weekday, and you can get it on Facebook. You get on our website. You can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. The iWork4Him Power Thought. It's your inspiration for the beginning of your day, check it out online. You can also listen at iWork4Him. com forward slash listen to get ahold of it. Thanks for listening in today.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim Brangenberg. I'm a Christ follower, my workplace, it's my mission field. Ultimately iWork4Him!

7/31/24 - 2053: What's Up (and Down) with the Brangenbergs?

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Life is tough. Jesus very specifically said in John 16 33, I have told you these things so that in me, you may have peace in this world. You will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. So why is it so many Christians seem surprised when their life takes a wild turn? Do you read your Bible, people? The closer you walk with the Lord, the more you live by faith, and the more your world is going to feel like a hurricane is going on all around you, and you're in the eye of that hurricane. That is the kind of six months that Marth and I have had. We're going to take these next 20 minutes or so and tell you the highs and lows of our 2024, and talk about where iWork4Him is going next. Martha, it's been quite a year, hasn't it?

Martha: It sure has, Jim. But it's okay. This is the process of what God is doing in our life, and we're just very transparently going to share it with everybody today so that we can be encouraged by each other.

Jim: Yeah, I just think it's important that we are real. We're often interviewing other people, and sometimes, we just figured we should share our story of the things that God has us going through. It really, 2024 started with the end of 2023. A very good friend of mine, in fact, six good friends of mine died between Thanksgiving and the 29th of December.

And the 29th of December, it was my very good friend, Jeff Norris, right here in Marionville, Missouri. Incredible losses and around the globe of people just dropping dead. And six of my friends, and really since then, three more, all of a sudden, dying. So many friends lost suddenly, without explanation. You almost wonder if there's a pattern. But really, it just leaves a lot of widows and widowers out there who need somebody to come alongside of them. But it's just been tough mentally to deal with all that.

Martha: And I think, Jim, something to add to that is the fact that it really gives you that pause where we look and we say, what has God done in these people's lives? And the amazing thing is we've had amazing things to celebrate in those lives that were lost, that they were lives well lived, but it also makes us realize that we never know when our time is going to be done and to live life with the abundance, even in the hard that God has called us to. And that's been just a real reality for us.

And I think that's really one of the biggest takeaways for me is, looking at their lives and saying, essentially, what am I doing with the dash between my beginning and my end?

Jim: And if one day you find this podcast and I'm missing, I'm gone. People, do not mourn me. I am having a party with the Lord. I'm ready to go.

Martha: Wait, but that would mean I'd have to take over the technology and so it probably won't be there.

 (laughter)

Jim: Okay. So we had another really unique... Okay, that was a low time, but this winter, while we were dealing with all the processing, all of these friends who had died, we got to take our garage that we had bought off of a lot and put it onto our homestead here in our little house on a prairie in Missouri. And we finished up a garage on the inside and wired it all up for electricity and built Martha her own portion and her own shed. She now has a garden shed in the back half of our garage, which is her own she space.

Martha: So that's been just a fun project that we got to do together, Jim, is that I think why you're highlighting it. There was some hardship in that too, because did you all know that if a building is built square, but it's brought to a property and tweaked, then it is no longer square? And when you go to build walls in a non square garage, it is quite the challenge, but it was, it's been a fun project and I'm looking forward to the days ahead where we can spend more time out there just actually creating things for fun, maybe even some Christmas gifts.

When you said what time of year it is, it's okay.. We know that we are way past the halfway point, and for me, I always measure it by how many months till Christmas?

Jim: Less than five.

Martha: So I better get going in that cottage of mine and get some gifts made.

Jim: But the interesting thing, for those of you that don't know, Martha, and I love to do remodeling projects, and we have rehabbed an entire commercial building. We have rehabbed a house along with my son-in-law. Caleb helped a ton. And his dad, Jeff, who's no longer with us. But this garage project we pretty much did on our own and it turned out great. Martha, you're gonna have to post a picture.

Martha: That'd be fun.

Jim: In the notes with this.

Martha: I could do that, I could do that.

Jim: We had a really cool thing happen though in March, which was also involved a few challenges.

Martha: Yeah, so one of our granddaughters came to live in Missouri and this has been an amazing time. Think of yourselves as, i f you are empty nesters, those of you that are, that all of a sudden you have a little one, five years old, in your little home with not a whole lot of space.

Readjusting our schedule and our activities and even the food that we eat and the timing of things. It's been a lot of things that we've had to say, you know what? It reminds me of parenting for the first time when all of a sudden you're like, whew. My stuff doesn't matter anymore. This little one is the priority and the one that we need to focus on.

And so for us empty nesters, it's been quite an adjustment, but a really great one because seeing life through the eyes of a five year old, there's nothing like it. Because the big problems of the world are not there. The sad problems are things like a balloon popping and getting bug bites and things like that.

And it's been a time for us to slow down to be able to have a schedule that is pretty rigid, which again, as empty nesters is not something you always do. And then just really saying, Lord, teach us in this moment who we need to be.

Jim: Now, as part of that, Martha just mentioned. So our granddaughter is gluten free and sugar free and dye free. And so Martha said we had to change the way we ate. No, I didn't change the way I eat. I just felt guilty all the time.

 (laughter)

Jim: So one of my favorite things, Martha goes to Aldi, one of the greatest grocery stores on the planet, and sometimes they have little white powdered donuts. And my granddaughter looks at me and she goes, what are you eating, Grandpa? This is my, this is like a piece of toast, just, but it's got gluten in it and sugar.

Martha: I'm pretty sure you called it a white biscuit.

Jim: White biscuit, it's like a white biscuit! Cause she made me feel guilty cause I'm eating donuts and she can't have donuts. She's eating gluten free bread with nothing on it and sometimes I give her butter and she thinks she's died and gone to heaven, and I'm feeling guilty. The other day I was having cereal. She's like What's in that, Grandpa? I'm like, I am tired of feeling guilty. I just want to eat.

Martha: It's okay.

Jim: It's okay.

Martha: She's actually very gracious about it. She's just curious. She doesn't give you a hard time. So the guilt is all on your own, honey. So you're carrying that one.

Jim: It is. I'm carrying it. And she wants to know why my water's green. I'm like, cause it's tasty and it's Mountain Dew. Okay. All right. One of the real challenges of this spring has been our son, Joshua. He's not been the challenge, but Joshua has been suffering from having strokes and it was caused by an injury and it has been so hard to deal with when you have a son who's 33 years old and starts having strokes and he's perfectly healthy. Our son Joshua is healthy. He eats green stuff without being told, like kale and arugula without even, nobody's making him. He just eats it. It's what's wrong with you? You didn't grow up in my household.

Martha: Does not take that from you.

Jim: No, he doesn't. But that's tough to try to reconcile having your boy having strokes at 33 years old.

Martha: But we're celebrating that he has been stroke free for many weeks now and we're just praying for that continued recovery, but it's such a helpless feeling and I am sure that there are people out there that have other things that they've dealt with in their life where you can't fix it. You can't make it go away. You can't help it in any way, but we can. Because we know the power of prayer, and we have had people across the globe praying for Joshua, for his health, for his protection. And we have seen that he has been protected over and over again, because he's having to really lay low and take care of himself, which is hard with a house full of children, of kids, of a family, and so we're just grateful that we do have the most powerful thing that we can do, and that is to pray.

Jim: But sometimes, to be honest with you, you come out and you say the words all I can do is pray. Yeah. But when you realize that's the best thing you can do, but sometimes you just, when you're a parent, you just want to do something and there's nothing you can do. Nothing you can do. You can go to visit him at the hospital, but when it's 1120 miles to the hospital, that's a long drive.

Martha: But again, changing that way we're talking, Jim, because there isn't nothing we can do. It's that constant reminder. We do feel helpless, but we have the greatest helper of them all, and the great physician. And, you were talking with somebody else locally here the other day and saying, All healing is temporary, because eventually,

Jim: All healing on Earth is temporary.

Martha: Yes. And so having that perspective, but being forced to have that perspective, being forced to actually face it and to make that realization, it has been a struggle. And again, we're not just wanting to sit here and talk all about our struggles, but being real with you and realizing that everyone listening has a story that they're going through and being able to transparently talk about how, on a daily basis, we have to keep reminding ourselves: trust. Jim, I think it's a key time for you to share Proverbs 3:5-6, what the Lord's really been telling you there.

Jim: Through all of the spring, God has just reminded me, as I've wrestled with it many times in the middle of the night, just Proverbs 3:5-6: trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. And in all your ways - not some of your ways, not a part of your ways, but in all your ways - acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.

For me, the trust in the Lord thing seemed pretty easy, but the lean not on your own understanding. Yeah, I'm in my late fifties. I got a lot of understanding, but through a lot of this,

Martha: and we have Google

Jim: and we have the Google.

Martha: So we think we can get all the understanding.

Jim: And so it just reminded me. You know in this, there's nothing you can do but just trust me. So talk to me about it and that was good. And so that's what we do. Now we live in southwest Missouri now and we moved my parents from Arizona to be in our side yard so that in their 90s, we were there to help them out. They're still living independently and doing pretty good but whenever we go on a road trip, which we do for iWork4Him, we went on a road trip to Florida in April for the US Christian Chamber of Commerce huge world. What was it? Something world Expo?

Martha: Spiritual world expo.

Jim: There you go. And we always have my sister Sue and her husband, Jeff come down from Minnesota to be in my house so that in case mom and dad need anything. So we get on the road trip and we get to Orlando and My mom falls and breaks two bones in her pelvis. Again, nothing we can do, except for praying, which is the best thing we can do. But at the same time we're dealing with all that, then we're just grateful that God had given us foresight to have my sister here so she can handle it all so we could do the job of emceeing and being a part of a super great event. And if you haven't checked out the US Christian Chamber I totally, we're gonna talk about the event in just a minute, but check it out online at uschristianchamber. com.

And I'm just super grateful for that. My mom is doing good today and she's back walking around today. She's ornery, just like normal in a great way.

Martha: Everything is good. It's funny because I was just reading the story of Joseph and being reminded,

Jim: must feeling more like Job, but you're feeling more like Joseph?

Martha: Yes. And because I think it's really relevant because what Joseph went through, it did not make any sense. He'd had all these dreams. God showed him what his future was gonna be, yet he was in prison. His brother sold him into slavery, all that. But ultimately at the end it was to preserve the very family that it felt had turned on him. And so it was, to me, that's just been such a encouragement. Even just the last couple of days when I read it in the children's Bible that that we've been reading with our five year old, just this story that we have no idea what God sees outside of time.

We're so constrained by right now, this spring, this summer, getting ready for, oh my goodness, fall, I almost said, but it's still hot out, right? So we're not really there yet. But just the reality that we have no idea what God has for our future, but He knows the plans He has for me, plans for hope and a future. And I am so grateful for that.

Jim: And what's great is whenever we say plans for a hope, our granddaughter says, and don't forget a future because that's what she says.

So not only is our youngest daughter and her husband struggling because his father died in December, they've been working through those issues. And our son, our middle child, our son has had four strokes. And that's been a major issue. Then our oldest daughter has been doing foster care for two teenagers, and it was a phenomenal opportunity. Really difficult when those two foster kids, after almost 18 months, then went to go be adopted into another family.

And at one point in time, all of our kids are really struggling. And again, mom and dad, they're just mom and dad, we're not superhuman. And so it's teaching us all to really pray. And as we've been praying for our kids since the day they were born, or the day they became part of our family, that's what we just are reminded to do. To pray for our kids and our grandkids every day.

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So Martha, let's do some highs for the year. We've had some incredible things that we've lived through. We've shared some of the challenges, some of the adversity. But remember, God always uses adversity in our lives to take us from who we are to who He can use more effectively. So maybe we're being prepared for something.

Martha: I'm pretty sure we're all being prepared for something, even if it's just to be more like Christ. And I say just. See? We have to really watch our words.

Jim: Messaging issue today.

Martha: Because we say those things like all I can do is pray. Maybe I'm just becoming more like Christ. No, that's a really big thing! I hope that we are and I hope that these situations help us to lean in more to Him and help us to be more like Christ.

Before you even bring up the first event, Jim, I was thinking about the opportunity I had this spring to gather with 21 other Faith and Work for Women organizations in Dallas, and talk about better collaboration, how we can work together, how we can model what that looks like. And out of that group has come a monthly prayer call. And I had that call just this morning. And it's such a reminder that to take what we just said even further and lift each other up in prayer when we don't have the words to pray or when we have things to celebrate and we're just seeking the Lord's will on something.

I'm just very grateful for the power of collaborative prayer.

Jim: What a fantastic reminder and the faith and work for women movement is really fantastic, and there's so much collaboration in the ministries in the faith and work for women side of the faith and work movement. Martha, we had the opportunity to emcee an event in Orlando this year on behalf of the U. S. Christian Chamber, and we are founding members of the U. S. Christian Chamber. We're on the board of directors of the U. S. Christian Chamber, but probably some of the most fun we've had already this year was emceeing that event with over 300 people from around the world, which, it's the U. S. Christian Chamber, but people want to know it from around the world. It was so great.

Martha: That's because the International Christian Chamber was also there, Jim. And we are, as U. S. Christian Chamber, are, we have people that all melds together because we are a country involved in the International Christian Chamber as well.

Jim: That's right. It was a gathering of business people and ministry people all focused on ministering to people out there in their workplaces The US Christian Chamber with Krystal Parker at the helm is an incredible Organization. It was so much fun just to see the fellowship going on. It was so great just to be there. It was three powerful days, exhausting days, but we had some great people walking alongside of us. We had Eric Floyd and we had

Martha: I don't know who all you're thinking of, but incredible people that came alongside to make the event happen. And you know what else happened at that event is the launch of the Kingdom Commerce book that we participated in and wrote a chapter because the whole focus of the Christian chamber is you can't have a business without profit. You, you need commerce to make things happen, but what are we doing with that commerce? And really having a kingdom perspective. And so that is just an exciting side note that the book was launched during the Christian chamber.

Jim: Oh, because we're doing this live and we're recording this. It was the event planner.

Martha: Oh my goodness. Now you can relax. Okay. Okay. Keep going.

Jim: Fantastic. So in Dallas, we participated in the faith and work summit where people that are involved in discipling workplace believers from all over the country, and again, around the world, came together to share what God is using them to do in their locales. And sometimes those locales are worldwide. Sometimes there's countrywide. Sometimes they're citywide and people came and shared best practices and they just shared here's what God is doing. And look, there's another one coming up in 2026. Looks like it could be in Cincinnati. Just stay tuned right here at iWork 4Him. We'll let you know when that's coming up.

Again, another gathering of incredible believers, a lot of time of fellowship, a lot of time of prayer, a lot of time of just sharing what is God up to. So much fun. And it was in Dallas... for the barbecue.

Martha: What we know iWork4Him is all about is letting people know, letting you, the listeners, the watchers, the subscribers, know what God is doing so that you can participate. Whether it's local to your area, something virtual, whatever it might be, something you get to travel to. And I think that was the highlight, Jim, for us is that it's finally like we get to have more than one event in a year where people get to travel, be together, gather, have koinonia, have fellowship, and really get to hear each other's hearts in a more personal way.

Jim: They can have koinonia. But could you spell it? That's really the issue.

What's been fun for us in our, on our off time, we've been exploring Branson, Missouri, the greatest place of family entertainment in all of the country. They've got amusement parks. They've got shows. I think it's 90 different shows. All of them honoring God, faith, and family, all family friendly shows, just so much fun.

It's only an hour and five minutes away. And so we go off and we've been going to Silver Dollar City . In fact, this week we're going again. We like it. It's fun. Many of you think we work all the time and we usually do, but with our little granddaughter, we have been forced to go check out some other parts of Missouri.

Martha: And ride rides. Now, Jim has somebody to ride rides with him.

Jim: But she likes the teacups, people. The teacups are the most terrifying ride in America because there's no controlling how much you can spin.

We get to do another event coming up this fall. In Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Martha: Very exciting. So 94 X, I guess I call it the 94 X summit. And we'll put the link in there so you can find out more about that. But Sean Kouplen the founder of Regent Bank, 94 X is really his.

Jim: He wrote a book called 94 X, which is a fact that you spend 94 percent more of your time at work than you do at home. Or no. Let's see. The people that work for you spend 94 times more time with you than they do their own family.

Martha: Wow. Or church. Is it family or church? 94.

Jim: Oh yeah, maybe it's 94 percent more time outside of the office than... read the book! Read the book. Don't wait for the movie.

Martha: Anyway, we're getting to be involved in that summit this fall, and I think it's going to be another great gathering in the middle of our country. You can learn more about it at the link I'll connect there in the show notes. You love it when I say that, I know, Jim.

Let's talk about local, some of the things that God has been opening the doors for. First one I'm really proud of. Can I talk about it?

All right. There had been a tragedy in our town. Many lives were lost in an accident. Jim went to the fire chief and was talking to him and saying, w do hat you do when you have this kind of devastation? Is anybody praying with you? How are you getting help to process it from that perspective? Long story short, Jim is now, after many classes and tests and training, he is now the official fire chaplain for the city of Marionville, Missouri.

Jim: City of Marionville Fire Department.

Martha: Yes, the fire chaplain, that's what it is. So I, it's opened the door for a lot of opportunities to pray with people and to be a good support for those first responders, because I've never had my eyes so open to all that they deal with. You can't just change their outfit and go home and not be affected. It's amazing the things that they have to endure. So really amazing how you get to serve our city in that way, Jim, through the fire department.

Jim: And and I'm learning how to be a firefighter at the same time. Slowly, but surely.

Martha: How do you like wearing all that heavy gear?

Jim: Yeah, in the middle of July, wearing that heavy gear out on a car accident out on the highway was less than pleasant. So if you ever wonder, are these guys suffering? Yes.

Martha: It's very sacrificial.

Jim: Bring them a bottle of water if you see them alongside of a car wreck because they're thirsty. Believe me, people, they're thirsty.

Martha: They may not take time to drink it, but it's a nice, it's a nice thought. So what else, Jim, is happening?

Jim: One of the really cool things in town, because we're business owners in town and we rehabbed a building in town, we somehow got the ability to start helping our city, along with the mayor and the city council, to develop an economic development commission or committee. They haven't decided what they're going to call it yet, but we're working on a formal plan to attract businesses and people to the town of Marionville, a town that at one point in time was very much a thriving small town in America. And after all of big city moves in the 80s and the 90s has become a quiet town.

Martha: Like you were talking about Branson, we have heard through history that people from Branson used to come to Marionville to shop. Now, whether that's really true or not, I don't know. But we're going to go with that. It's in this little history book that we have.

Jim: But along the lines of economic development, Martha.

Martha: Yes. So we really felt this need to gather the local business people. So we just developed something called Marionville Business Connect. We meet every month. We get to know each other. A lot of businesses locally are so busy trying to stay afloat that they don't look up and look out. And so that's one of the things we've really tried to encourage. And it's been great.

New relationships have been flourishing out of it, and I just think it's going to be a great asset to our town as we continue to learn more about each other and support the work that each other is doing. I need to go do a count. Every meeting we maybe have 20 people, but there's probably been 45 different businesses that have come through at different times.

And, I just want to encourage people, when you think you need to have some big fancy way to get people together, no. Just open up the table, get some cookies, and invite people in.

Jim: Could it be the cookies? Or is it your shining personality?

Martha: No. It's the desire to really get to know each other, but not having the format for it, and just opening the doors and say, welcome in.

Jim: And that really led to the fact that, people don't read newspapers pretty much anymore because they're wicked expensive. I think my parents spent a hundred dollars and went to get the newspaper a day late.

Martha: Yeah, but they look good on the front porch.

Jim: They do, it's hilarious. Yeah. So we decided to create a news podcast for our little town. We call it the Good Place Marionville Podcast. It's out there on Facebook under Good Place Marionville. And in this we highlight the good that's happening in our little town. Maybe an idea for you in your town, because people, all they hear is the negative, but there's so much incredible positive, and we wanted our town to hear that, and they couldn't read it anywhere.

And you know how Facebook pages can be. It's not always a highlight of the great that's going on. So we want to highlight that.

Martha: Sometimes it's the grumpy.

Jim: Sometimes it is, but so that's a new podcast that we're doing on a weekly basis, but also on another podcast that we've added to our cadre of things that we produce on a regular basis is the Digital Desperados podcast that we do alongside one of our major sponsors, SaferNet. The Digital Desperados podcast highlights really the lives of digital desperados, cyber criminals ,and how they came to be and what they ended up doing and really blows your mind.

Martha: It does blow your mind.

Jim: And we're doing it just to draw attention to SaferNet but also to highlight the stories. Most people don't know the stories behind the crimes yet. Most of us have been a victim of at least one cyber crime.

Martha: But like we talk about often when we're talking about SaferNet is the fact that a lot of people don't do anything about it until they've been hacked or until they've had a breach or until they've had something bad happen, a virus gets on their computer. And that's why we love SaferNet because a simple proactive step can protect you from this unknown disaster that they talk about on the Digital Desperados.

Jim: Yeah, we have highlighted some great people that you will know their names. Check it out. It's on apple podcasts, all your regular podcast platforms.

Martha: Awesome. Jim over the years we have put a lot of things into place that help us to better align with our values while still giving us the great services we expect, because I don't, I think we still need to look for excellence. So I just want to share a few of those types of things with you all listening today.

So for our medical needs, we use Samaritan Ministries, SamaritanMinistries. org, and that is a medical health care sharing organization.

Jim: Christian Medical Health Care Sharing.

Martha: And for our cell phones, we use Patriot Mobile. And you can go to patriotmobile. com forward slash iWork4Him to learn more about that. But right now you can support iWork4Him by making that same decision to switch over your cell phone service. And it is such an easy process.

Jim: Why would they switch their cell phones? Because that's such a pain.

Martha: Because it's really not a pain. Patriot mobile takes you through the whole thing with their US based customer service support and they have, they use all the services. So you're not compromising the service, you're not compromising what you're getting, but your dollars are going to things that support the very pillars of our conservative society. And it can be I don't remember what all their pillars are.

Jim: It's faith, family, freedom.

Martha: And an amendment.

Jim: Oh, and the second amendment.

Martha: Second amendment. So it's powerful and it's a great way to not only put your vote with your dollars, but also support iWork4Him in the process. So you can find out all about all of our sponsors by going to iWork4Him. com forward slash sponsors and learn about the ways that you can get involved in using organizations that better support your values.

Jim: Yeah. Before we end this, one of our longest podcasts of the year, we want to just talk about where we're heading this fall. I started with our next podcast. You could check it out at shifttowith. com, shifttowith. Because that's where our focus is going.

For the last 11 and a half years, we've talked about how do you work for God? What does it look like for people to work for God? But what we realize is that most people while working for God, forget to work with God and that he wants to be involved in the intimate details of our lives, specifically our work. And all we have to do is ask him. When we've got a problem at work God, what's your solution here? When we're trying to hire somebody, is this the person we should hire, father?

You know when we're walking down the street and you see somebody Father, should I stop and talk to them today? How do we learn to work with God? So often we're striving. We're trying to work. I'm going to work for God. And we're trying to do all these great things for God. And he's going, Hey, I'm over here. I'm over here. I'd like you to work with me over here. And we just lose it. So look for our shows, the interviews all this fall will be of people who have figured out how to work with God.

And check out what I've had to say about it at shift to with. com, which will take you right to our iWork4Him website on a page on shift to with, are we going to change the organization name from iWork4Him to I work with him? I don't know. You'll just have to stay tuned.

Martha: Lean not on your own understanding. That's really one of the big key to all that we've been talking about today. But Jim, there is one more project. There's probably a lot more projects, but one more that we're going to bring up today, which is the next thing that God really is wanting us to speak into marriages.

We have had a passion and a heart for breaking marriages and not just breaking marriages. If they're breaking.

Jim: For helping marriages that are breaking.

Martha: Okay. But also before they're breaking. We really want to strengthen up, to shore up, to feed into and see the value of working on your marriage every day. And so what is the name? Are we going to say the name? The title that God has given you that yes, it will get your attention.

Jim: I just want you to know before we're writing this book, first of all, we've been married almost 40 years, which is hard to believe. We've known each other 42 years. We've done 12 marriage retreats. We have mentored 75 entrepreneurial couples. This is something that we're just tired of people not hearing it from the pulpit. We need people to hear more from the pulpit. Pastors, if your listening, please do marriage series, teach people how to be married successfully.

But if you don't want to, and you want to refer people to our book, look for a book coming soon to a bookstore near you. I don't know, but for sure to Amazon sometime in 2025. The name of the book? Get the Hell Out of Your Marriage.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace? It's our mission field. But ultimately, iWork4Him.

7/24/24 - 2052: The Word at Work

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Martha and I love to find out about new organizations forming across the country that are built around the mission to disciple Christ followers to live out their faith at work. We love it even more when we hear about organizations that form in our great new state of Missouri. Not that Missouri is a new state, but it's our new state. The other day we found out about Gateway Faith and Work in the st. Louis, Missouri area, hence the gateway thing. Their upcoming fall event - we're going to talk about today and we're going to get to meet their coordinator and emcee of the event, Miranda Carls. I had a short conversation with Miranda, but I knew that she needed to come on iWork4Him to tell us all about the event and all about Gateway Faith and Work. Miranda Carls, welcome to iWork4Him

Miranda Carls: Thank you. So good to be with you, Jim and Martha, and welcome to your new state of Missouri. It's my old state. I've never lived anywhere else other than the state of Missouri. Welcome. It's a great place to be.

Jim: Thank you. We really enjoy it. It's fun. We really love being back in Midwest. We both grew up in the Midwest, but spent 20 years, I was going to laugh and say 20 years of purgatory in Florida, but it really wasn't that bad, but it was hot and muggy all year long.

Martha: Yeah, I know. That's how most people feel. So I really just, but now we're in the show me state.

Jim: We are. So show me what God is doing up there, Miranda. We really want to hear all about the Gateway Faith and Work event and the ministry of Gateway Faith and Work. But first we want to hear your Jesus story.

Miranda Carls: Yeah I would say that I have an uninteresting Jesus story, but that would be offensive to the transformative work of Jesus on not only my life, but the life of every Christ follower. Everyone's testimony is incredible because of the redemptive work of Christ. But I will say that my journey to Jesus began very early. And followed a very slow and steady path through the first part of my life.

I was raised in a Christian home. I had very faithful parents. They were excellent examples. I had that, that classic 1980s flannel board childhood. And I'm thankful for that. I was exposed to truth and to scripture very early in life. And then I faced kind of your typical challenges in my teen and college years. And that's really where the pressure existed to pick if I was going to move forward as simply a nominal Christian or as a committed one.

Nominal Christianity was the norm at that time, which is different than today, but I chose to be a committed one and was fortunate to be engaged in a really solid college ministry and have good fellowship with other people through my early career and then on toward today as well. So that's my story of coming to Christ. And thankful that it began very early and I love hearing, I love hearing everyone's Jesus story, but that's mine. Began early and slow and steady. But I think we all get to that point where we have to decide is this a faith that I've just inherited from my parents or is this something that's real and that I'm committed to as well?

Martha: I, very much like you, probably a very similar testimony, but yet I love that you said, God's transformative work we cannot diminish. I was just having a conversation with a friend the other day about flannel graphs. I love that you said that but a lot of us leave our faith in that flat dimension and not go deeper. And I was like, Oh, that is such for people that understand what a flannel graph is. That's a really good analogy. So connect the dots for us, then what is your work story? And how did you come to understand the connection between your faith and your work?

Miranda Carls: Yes. I love that. I think that's an important question for all of us to consider. Anyone who loves Jesus and has a job, we have to look for those connections. So I have always worked in the field of people development. I've never worked in a church or ministry setting and I've always known that the Christian life is to be fully integrated and fully for Christ, whatever you do, right? So I've always known I was to be fully Christian and -

Jim: Wait a minute, always? You grew up in a church where they told you that no matter what you're doing, that was, your faith must be lived out there? That was your ministry place, that was your mission field? You grew up in a church where you were taught that?

Miranda Carls: Yeah, I, I don't know if it was... we can't look back on our childhood and always identify who or where we were taught things. But I don't remember ever thinking that being a Christian was supposed to only apply to one part of our lives. I don't know if I would credit my parents or just reading scripture from an early age or a pastor.

But I, I know where that question's coming from, Jim because for a lot of people, that's not the message or what they hear or what we think. I tend to think that most committed Christians who are in Scripture regularly, who are engaged in fellowship and conversations with other Christians, who are spurring them along regularly, who are being fed by the word regularly, probably cognitively somewhere in their brain know that we are supposed to be for Christ all the time, always. That's very clear in Scripture.

I think what happens is most Christians cognitively know this, but we don't always behaviorally show this. And so that's where what we know and our behaviors cannot always be aligned. But I did definitely get to a point where, okay, I know this. But I was in that space that a lot of Christians fall into at work where we just turn it off, right? We set it aside and we don't think about it throughout the day. And that's where you can call it compartmentalization or something else. But we do it. It's very common. And I found myself in that space and God really used several situations and just pressing on my heart to change that.

And then eventually he led me through going beyond working on myself and being in a place to support brothers and sisters in that as well.

Jim: All right, but you're working on so many things. You're a coach, you're an author, you're a speaker, you're a podcast host, you're a wife. You're a mom of three boys, which that's you know a full time job in itself. I'm a boy. I understand. You're like a superhero. You're a song leader at church, too. How do you keep all that in proper perspective? Prioritize your walk with God?

Miranda Carls: Yeah. I wish I were an actual superhero because that would be very impressive to my three boys. You know, we all fill our time, right? So that everyone, I bet the folks listening in also have a full list of roles and responsibilities that we could rattle off, and for me I think I always try to look at spiritual health and that's what I encourage other people to do as well, because this looks different. Life looks different for everyone. And I think it's not always about numbers, like how many organizations are you working with, or how many boards are you on, or how many kids do you have? How many activities are they in? It's about looking at what that actually looks like for you and how that's impacting your spiritual health.

So even when I work with clients, with professionals, I never prescribed that a certain number of working hours is good or bad. It's about impact. So for me, I like to consider things like have I designed my day with so little margin that I'm unable to fulfill the discipleship opportunities that God has placed in my path with my children and friends? Is my, to go back to what we talked about a moment ago - is my focus fully off of Jesus for my entire workday or is a focus on Jesus integrated into my workday? Do I have focus time for connecting with God and spending time in his word Monday through Friday, not just on the weekend when the pastor asked me to open my Bible or when I'm sitting down with my church life group?

And if the answer is no to any of those questions, then that's when I know something needs to be adjusted. And maybe I need to minimize time in a certain area or restructure something.

Martha: Constantly asking ourselves those questions is so important because it's so easy to get off task and to not have our priorities right. And in the midst of all the things that we're doing, whatever God has called us to do. So in all of those things, what is it right now that you love the best about what you're doing?

Miranda Carls: I think it's the same thing I've always loved about work and in some capacity, like I said, I've always worked in people development and that's just, What I'm made for. I imagine I'll in some way, shape, or form continue my career in that space. I just love coming alongside people and teams and organizations and learning about them, seeing what makes them tick, helping them to remove any barriers and thrive as a team or as individuals. I love working with people.

That's just how God's wired me. And that's why I work in this field. And then on the faith and work side, which I do on the side of my, the work I get paid for, which is the people development work on the faith and work side, I really enjoy just seeing people, lots of people who are on mission and living fully integrated lives. I think we have a lot to feel very hopeful about as we look at just Christians in the everyday workplace.

Jim: I love that. Thank you, Miranda. Some of the things I love best about my work is the things I no longer have to do. Watching our computers for issues with viruses and hackers. We rely on SaferNet to protect us so I can do the things that i'm really called to do in my work. SaferNet has options for everyone, protection at home and the office. SaferNet. com. Let them know that iWork4Him sent you.

I just love that and Miranda and I love that. I sucked you into that commercial. That was fantastic because you like, that was beautiful because SaferNet really does transform, has transformed our organization.

So before we start talking about Gateway Faith and Work tell us about your book that you released in 2022. The Word at Work and your podcast, The Word at Work. Tell us about those.

Miranda Carls: Yeah. So both the book and the podcast were designed to be peer to peer resources. I wanted both of them to just feel like sitting down with someone who's in the trenches with you. So like I said I've never worked in full time ministry. My paycheck has never come from a church or from a even a non profit ministry organization. I have always worked in other settings.

Jim: You're a fully funded missionary at work. That's what you are, fully funded in your people development job.

Miranda Carls: Yes. I don't disagree, Jim. And I think we need new words. Cause even the word secular - nothing is secular, but Gosh, what was the question again?

 (laughter)

Jim: Sorry. That's my fault.

Martha: Talk about your book and your podcast.

Miranda Carls: Yes. Really designed to be a peer to peer resource from someone else who again, just works, spend a lot of hours each week working and want to just think really intentionally about how to do that biblically and how to do that for the glory of God.

And yeah, for the kingdom, how to represent Christ well in all settings. And so in the book, there's several chapters. There are 10 biblical principles for Christian professionals. We look at things like what should our expectations be going into the workplace? How do we bring our Christian worldview to work, especially if we're going into a setting where the dominant worldview is very different? How do we feed spiritual disciplines, fellowship? How do we disciple others? How do we focus on kingdom impact? Things like that.

Jim: I love that.

Martha: That's awesome. So for anybody listening, if they, you want to lean into this and learn more, you can find the book and the podcast, The Word at Work. Where's the best place for them to find those resources?

Miranda Carls: Yeah. Miranda Carls.com is a good hub for finding both of those things. And any articles I've written on Faith and work can be found there as well. And then the books on Amazon.

Jim: But your podcast is on the Awaken Podcast Network, found online at awakenpodcastnetwork. com, where we've got a gathering over 165 podcasts focused on the faith and work movement, and Miranda Carl's excellent podcast is there as well.

Martha: So we'll put that link in the show notes. That's right. So let's talk about Gateway Faith at Work, Faith and Work. I want to say it properly. Where did the idea come from?

Because you're busy doing your work, doing all the other things God has you called, to do. Where did this idea come from?

Miranda Carls: Yeah Several years ago I started creating a lot of content and resources for Christian professionals. Obviously the book and the podcast that we talked about, and then writing for some other online Christian publishers.

And I started to feel this hunger personally, but also see this hunger within others to be a little, to have activity that wasn't all online for lack of a better term. We can go find tons of articles and follow people on Instagram and all of that. But I think there's a real hunger for face to face connection and local community especially in an area like St. Louis, where there's lots of big corporations. We have Boeing and Bayer and lots of big. There's big office buildings where there's a lot of Christians going to work there every day, and they're probably not aware of all the other Christians that they work with. They're not making those connections.

So it really came simply from a desire to bring Christian professionals together physically and locally in the St. Louis area. And then also provide things to equip them for Christian living and gospel impacts out in the community. Because when we say out in the community, a lot of that is out in the workplace. Because what do many adults do Monday through Friday? They're employed vocationally somewhere. So that's really a big field of impact for many people.

Jim: You can check out more about Gateway Faith and Work online at Gateway Faith and Work.com, and of course Martha will have that in the show notes as well. Alright, so before we take a break and then head really into your huge event coming up on September 7th, I really wanna know what do you see God doing in St. Louis? Greater St. Louis, of course.

Miranda Carls: Yeah, I see again, an increased hunger for community and fellowship. I think that as our culture has changed where I know you guys can recall even 10, 15, 20 years ago there was a lot more Cultural Christianity.

And so that's not really the space that we're at right now. So Christians are facing more difficult decisions, more difficult ethical dilemmas in the workplace than maybe they would have in years past. And I think that creates naturally this hunger to find other like minded Christians and participate in fellowship, which we all need.

And to participate in encouraging one another, challenging one another, holding one another accountable to scripture. So that's really what I see locally and work through things like Gateway Faith and Work is pulling Christians together so that they can receive that, that deep fellowship that's put in the context of being a Christian at work and have those conversations.

And that was really the most exciting thing to see when we had our first event last year, was just standing in the lobby watching people talking. And talking about what it was like to be a Christian in their workplace or meeting people in a similar line of work and having that connection and exchanging information.

And so I think there's a hunger for that. And I see God equipping us to, to feed that hunger. And that's really exciting.

Jim: Are you seeing collaboration within the Christian community, the Jesus following community in the greater St. Louis area? Are you seeing ministries and churches coming together to reach the city together?

Miranda Carls: Yeah, absolutely. And we're all one, one family. And so there's many different churches, of course different denominations, different Christian organizations. I've definitely seen it coming together. We have one of our event sponsors is another faith based organization that serves Christian executives in the area. And we partner with them on this. We have some partner churches who are, helping by being host facilities or sending people to volunteer. So definitely a lot of collaboration. And I think that's something special about Events that exist outside of the walls of a singular church. . I hope every Christian is an active member of a local church body and gathering often with that church body.

But there's something unique and special that happens when we have those events where you bring together people and pitch a wider tent and have people coming from the First Baptist church down the road and the non-denominational Christian Church and all the churches in the area coming together because we are unified in Christ, not through the, whatever name happens to be on the sign outside of our church.

Martha: I love that. And one of the things I love is being able to share what we are doing, what's happening around the globe and in our own state with our listeners. And in this part of the show, I'd love to mention other things that our listeners may not be aware of.

And today I just want to talk quickly about the podcasts that are available to both listen to and watch, because we have a YouTube channel for just about anything, I think. But my current favorite is the, iWork4Him power thought, and it is a one minute boost to encourage or to challenge me as I start my day.

And I just want to encourage you to subscribe to this and any of the other podcasts that we offer by visiting iWork4Him . com and then just go to the listen button to see the listing of ours. And then of course, all of the podcasts like Jim was mentioning on the Awaken podcast network that we have learned about that are speaking into the faith and work voice. You can find on Awaken podcast network.

So the event that you have happening is September 7th. Tell us all about it so people get this picture of what that day is going to look like. And why they should go. Even to inspire them for their own town. But I know this is specific to St. Louis.

Miranda Carls: Yeah. Thanks, Martha. Our theme for this year, and this is our second year having the event, our theme this year is equipped. So equipped for workplace excellence. for faithfully walking the Christian life and then equipped by and for community with other Christians. We will have a mix of keynote messages and breakout sessions and our format last year and this year is that we'll bring in a keynote speaker from somewhere else and then we will have the breakout sessions largely led by Christian business leaders in the St. Louis area or Bible teachers in the st. Louis area.

So we have very much like a local presence in the St. Louis metro area for the breakout sessions. And then our keynote speaker is Greg Cockel from Stand to Reason. He wrote the book tactics, his new book street smarts is out. So he's all about equipping people for gospel conversations with non believers. And that felt like a really powerful topic for this event because as Christians in the general workplace we have a lot of conversations with non believers and there's a lot of opportunities. So looking at how can we do that with grace and truth and do that really well.

 And we'll have lots of food and fellowship and fun things as well, some live music over lunch. So it'll be a fun day and also a very fruitful and edifying day as well.

Jim: And I know everybody that's listening could go to gatewayfaithandwork. com and get registered for that event. You don't have to be from the greater St. Louis area to go. It's easy to get there. Just jump on I 55. You could jump on I 44. All of them lead to St. Louis from somewhere in the country. Even I 40 somehow sneaks up and around. You can get there if you want to. That's right. GatewayFaithAndWork. com. All right, so my question is What's your vision, your long term vision for what you would love to see God do in the greater st Louis area in the workplace, in the hearts and minds of workplace believers, and how are you gonna help turn that city around and build the kingdom there?

Miranda Carls: Yeah, so my answer to this question - I've had to be very intentional about this because if you knew me a little better you know that I love to plan well ahead of things. I like to have all the ducks in the row. I love structure. I love anticipating what will happen.

I've intentionally tried to stay very surrendered and as a steering committee we pray over this all the time. We try to stay in a very surrendered posture. We do a lot of throwing things at the wall and seeing if they stick, just responding to the needs that people have. My answer is that our vision for this is whatever His is.

And we pray each day and he has continued to make each next step pretty clear. We'll have a meeting where we're Oh, where should we hold this? And then just randomly meet a pastor from a church and there's some energy around it and it's a big church and we can do that.

Or we'll meet people who end up being just fantastic breakout session speakers or supporters of the event. So he's really guided things all along the way, even if it's not always with as much runway as I, I sometimes prefer to have. The luxury that we have as Christians is that we know how all of this ends.

We know God is sovereign. And that takes some of the pressure off while we still, of course, press onward in obedience and do everything that we can with everything that he's given us to stay on mission and keep putting things out there that will support Christians. So we've, in addition to the event, the annual event that we'll have we also have been doing some lunch and learns.

You guys probably know my friend, Helen Mitchell. So we had her do a lunch and learn one day. We've got coming up Reagan Rose of Redeeming Productivity. So topics that are very relevant to people in the workplace, but also very rooted in scripture or looking at a topic through the lens of scripture, of biblical worldview.

We've got some You version Bible plans. So we're playing around with different things, some small group models as well. So we're staying surrendered while also putting a lot of effort into putting things out there that hopefully will support people.

Martha: So exciting. And I, what a great example because especially when you're speaking to business people or people in the workplace, we have to plan. We, we have expectations, we have goals, we have, long term, short term, everything in between. And this idea of staying surrendered and saying, Lord, we don't want to get ahead of you.

That's part of our testimony. Jim and I have done that and said, Lord, look at this. We can do this for you. And it doesn't always, it doesn't work out well when you don't, when you're not listening and obeying. So what a great example in the midst of those that you are serving to say, you know what, we are, we're going to let the Lord lead this.

So are there any final thoughts that you want our listeners to hear that they can take with them today, whether it's practical application or something that has to do with your event? Just what would that final thought be?

Miranda Carls: Yeah. First one more thing about what you were just saying, Martha. And this is directed toward if anyone's listening and they want to start something locally. And I'm from a small town. I'm from a town of 2000. If you live in a small town, like there's need for this there too.

And so wherever you're planted right now don't measure things based on earthly metrics. Because our metrics are different and I think of, I always think of the, seed planting that we hear Paul talk about in scripture. So anything that you're doing, if you're walking in step with the spirit he can use that.

So this, for you feeding something like this could be localized to starting a Bible study at your workplace. Or it could be bringing people together in your small town or starting something in, in the larger area that you live in. I think it can be really easy to get caught up in earthly metrics, if you know what I'm saying with some of this, but looking at just what are opportunities and that you can feed into with the resources God has given you and where he's placed you. And pray for those opportunities because he will make the steps clear and guide you through that.

Jim: I think we need to have another conversation because we live in a town of 2200. So our town is much bigger than yours, 10 percent bigger. And there is a desperate need, we've been gathering really just small business people together in our building just to talk about what business going on.

We pray before the meeting and people share, a lot of believers at the meeting, but we haven't made it specifically for believers because we're just trying to connect business people in our small town among the business people because so many of them do business in Springfield or in Joplin.

They're not doing business here in town yet. We have this great little town that 170 years ago was formed because we had fresh water here long before Branson came about. So I love that you said hey if you're in a small town, you could do this here. That just inspired me. I just think that's fantastic. I love that. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Miranda Carls: Yeah, wherever you are. And then final thoughts. So to answer your question, Martha, I would say to everyone listening in, if you don't have one of these three things in place, get them in place this week, because they're important.

So number one. fellowship. If you don't have fellowship with someone else, at least one other person who you fellowship with and they have an understanding of what you do for work and you're able to talk openly about workplace challenges. I think that's important. Have you ever gone to church and you look around and you realize, I don't actually know what any of these people do Monday through Friday?

We don't talk about it. I've found it's very helpful to have peer professionals who are in a similar line of work and are also believers. And then number two, focus time with Jesus Monday through Friday. And then number three, an understanding of how work outside of church walls can grow the kingdom.

So if you're listening and you don't have one of those three in place, I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have put effort into all three of those, but if you don't they're important. So get those in place this week.

Jim: Yeah. Miranda Carls. Thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Miranda Carls: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Jim: Check out everything she's doing at MirandaCarls. com or GatewayFaithAndWork. com if you want to find out way more about what's going on in St. Louis area and on September the 7th. And all of that, Martha will put in the show notes. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.

7/17/24 - 2051: Work - An Extension of Your Faith

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: If we were to conduct a poll of everyone listening today and they ask you, Are the tech giants evil? Are they a lost cause? Should we all be paranoid about their end goals of controlling thought, commerce, and religion? Almost all of you would say yes, and yes! But what if I told you that each of the major tech companies has allowed groups of Jesus followers to gather together to pray and fellowship and grow in their faith?

Google, Intel, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. Each of these companies and many more are allowing believers to come together and live out their faith at work. Today, our focus will jump to Microsoft and the Christian ERG - employee resource group. That's really not an ERG, but it's an ERG.

And well, we're going to let Lori Kim tell you all about it, Lori Kim is here to tell us and talk about the amazing things happening in Microsoft and beyond in her hometown, the windy city of Chicago, Illinois, Lori Kim, welcome to iWork4Him.

Lori Kim: Thank you. Thank you so much, Martha and Jim, for having me here today.

And before I share the story, I wanted to give a quick the expectation of the perspective, the stories I'll be sharing today are based on my personal experiences, including my faith journey and how I integrate faith at work and in my ecosystem. So these are my own personal views. And I intend it for general information purposes only, and they do not represent official statements or positions of Microsoft.

Jim: So noted. So noted. We get that. Good job. So what she's saying is that Microsoft does not endorse What she's gonna say, and that's just fine. We got it. We want to hear your Jesus story. Tell us your Jesus story

Lori Kim: Thank you. So I grew up as a pastor's kid. I'm a pastor's kid in an immigrant family. I immigrated to US when I was 11 years old with zero English. So culture shock, language shock, right? The local church, The Chicago divine community was a cornerstone of our lives, right? So my understanding of God was shaped by the hands and hearts of the people You know, hearts of our church community. And if I can be honest, I often wrestle with the disconnect sometimes that happens between my belief about God and my personal experiences, especially at times struggling to connect with the invisible God, through our challenges, especially as an immigrant family. So with the humble beginning, we were more in a survival mode, if you will, with no permission to really express my feelings.

And I was expected to be that perfect pastor's kid, right? So I struggled with perfection, to be honest. And I feel like I was forced to grow up, mature quickly. And I learned early on that, coming from humble beginning, that complaints don't get you anywhere. Only actions matter. So my identity became tied to my accomplishments, confidence in doing and working hard and that eventually led to burnout. And my father, who was a pastor, was diagnosed with stage four cancer and he battled for a couple of years. And it was really hard for me and for our family at the time.

And I had this dangerous prayer. I didn't realize that it was dangerous at the time. And I prayed that God, I want to learn the secret to be content no matter the circumstances because I'm losing joy. And then came the three years of storm and on the day my father passed away I lost both my father and my job, which was my identity at that time. And shaking my sense of identity and the grief was really hard.

Grief is the loss of anything in life and it is very personal, and it's a long and painful process, especially when you lose someone, especially in your family. And I think in my experience is in three parts. So first is the loss. I lost my father. A second is the grieving process, and there's a whole process that comes with grief, the healing journey that really begins with surrendering our whole lives and every moment of our lives to God. And finally, the remaking of life, the transformation, right?

And I feel that when our pain meets our purpose, it becomes our calling and we don't waste our pain, right? And God transformed me through the years of storm growing in wisdom, the emotional maturity and also the relational maturity took place in that years of storm, right? And teaching me how brevity our life is, to choose fear of God over fear of men, and the importance of it having the eternal perspective, right? And I began to see my work as an extension of my faith and finding the unity. There's no divide between secular and sacred, right? There's only one life. And the peace shalom that it comes in everything that I was doing and learning to integrate faith and work.

And as a recovering workaholic finding and joining a Christian employee group at work even before Microsoft as North America provided a sense of belonging and a fresh perspective on the ultimate meaning of work through God's eyes, through God's lens, right? And this renewed vision and also this view, the growth mindset and also the gospel mindset, has really energized my whole life. And it really allowed me to experience God within my work. True calling isn't in what you're doing, and I believe it's in what you're, who you are doing it for.

So that big realization through the transformation took place and I, my life is a testament that God will make a way for you. Doors have opened that I didn't even know existed. So many stories around that, right? And situations worked out way better than I could have imagined was possible, right? And I, as I look back on my journey, I'm just filled with awe and gratitude, right?

For all the blessings and challenges, that have come in my way. And I still remember, praying for the things I have now. And I'm super grateful for the trials and tribulations. I have known some costs, even though I don't want to revisit that, right? The storm, right? And I don't wish that for anyone, but it was very important for me to go through that learning process that I'm grateful for all the people and the prayers that have guided me where I am today. And very honored and privileged to serve God, by serving our neighbors and sharing stories like how I am sharing today, because I really believe that our faith grows when we share stories, just like Jesus shared parables, to spread the good news, right?

And I give all glory to God for this amazing opportunity. And thank you again, Martha and Jim, for inviting me and for our listeners, to leaning into my Jesus story. Thank you.

Jim: So talk to us about how that Jesus story has impacted you in the high tech world, as you ended up with a job at Microsoft and got involved in marketplace ministry for Microsoft. How did that understanding that you gained during those storms transform how you looked at your work in the high tech world?

Lori Kim: Thank you for the question. I love it because living out our faith is important part of who we are, our whole authentic self at work. And God grows our soul through our work in our development and how we show up at work as Christians and we experience God in new ways. And the maturity takes place as well.

And I feel like in today's virtual world, we were just talking about that, right? Where there's no casual water cooler conversation, if you will, right? To share personal stories and deepen relationship. There's nothing quite like the energy that comes from having a belonging, a sheer sense of community, right? Sharing stories as our faith grows, and also fostering connection, energizing possibilities, right? As Brene Brown says, connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued. And, having the opportunity at at my work, we have a Christian group called Marketplace Ministry for Microsoft.

And our vision and what our mission is, as a Christian faith based inclusive group, is to invite not only Christians, both believers and unbelievers, right? Our allies and our extended community so that they can be inspired. We are inspired together to learn and grow together, engaging with our One Microsoft Growth Mindset culture so we can bring our whole self to work, including our faith and be the best that we can be. And it's a wonderful opportunity that we have.

Jim: We want to talk in detail about that, but really first we want to give a shout out to one of our great sponsors, Martha.

Martha: Yeah. So SaferNet is - you're in the tech world. And so maybe even some of the people that have never listened to our show before are in technology because they're listening to your story, Lori.

But SaferNet is a company that we rely on here at iWork4Him and in our personal life because they are protecting our computers so that we can do the very things we're meant to be doing and keeping out the bad guys. Keeping the filters on, keeping everything in place to help us have a safe environment for our business and our home.

So SaferNet. com is where you can go to learn more about their VPN, the filters, everything that they have to offer to protect us so that we can keep doing the work that God has called us to do and do it safely and to keep everything intact.

So Lori, I would love to hear from you how you see yourself actually living out your faith at work. What does it look like in your day to day?

Lori Kim: So for me as Christian, as believer, it's a reflection of our relationship with our God and representing him in all spheres, including the marketplace, which is our work. And I feel like our work becomes a ministry and we partner with God, right? Where we apply gospel truth and we nurture our souls and experiences, presence in every challenge.

So our vocation is more of a divine calling, not just a job, living out the great commission, embracing our gifts and serving others with love and the way we do that is, you know, at Microsoft what we do is with our Christian group we have a weekly Bible study and we also have weekly prayer meeting and we have what we call a monthly wisdom.

Jim: Hang on. Hang on. You're talking about all this group stuff. We want to know how Lori Kim, in her role at Microsoft, is living out your faith. What does it look like? How does it impact what you do on a daily basis? Cause we, we're going to talk about all the great stuff that's going on with the Microsoft or what marketplace, what do we call it again? Sorry. Marketplace ministry at Microsoft. We know that there's a lot of good stuff going on there, but for Lori Kim personally, as a tech person, what does it look like for you to live out your faith?

Lori Kim: Yeah. So gospel is personal, right? And I believe. The world needs who God made you to be. And for me to fully live my calling to God's love in service of others is very important. And the way I show up at work is to reflect God's love for others, right? And that takes creating a space where we can connect and worship and draw together. And also, listening, deep listening and showing that we care, that we are here for them. And I do that not only at work, but also through volunteer work that I do. So I serve in a couple of nonprofit organizations to reflect God's love for others and to invest in the legacy impact.

Martha: When you say reflecting God's love to others, sometimes that's not easy in our workplaces. And so it's, it sounds like it's such a simple concept, when we and our listeners and Jim and I and you, we've all experienced that where, boy, there's sometimes it's really hard to reflect God's love.

Jim: Sometimes people are just hard to love.

Martha: And I think that's why then that what you were saying about your marketplace ministry for Microsoft is so important because it helps you to build that up and to reinforce it and to encourage each other's as you're living it out so that you can hold each other accountable when you know who the other believers are at work. It's mmm, that wasn't really reflecting God's love, Lori, in that moment. So how is that Christian group helping you then to reflect God's love?

Lori Kim: Discipleship, I think is how I would explain it, listening and spending time and really getting to know people as people and building the relationship, that one on one in a relationship, I think, is very important. Because the closer that you get, to know the person, the greater impact you can have, not only in that person's life and also for yourself, because you need that proximity, to really fuel that empathy, right? And to show them the love of Jesus in the ways that we can. Sometimes, yes, it is messy, but I think it's so worth, keep trying and holding each other accountable and showing up for one another and having that encouragement for one another is huge in this journey.

Jim: So you mentioned a lot of different things going on within your workplace and Microsoft's got offices all over the world. And it's got tens and tens of thousands of employees. But you mentioned that marketplace ministry at Microsoft, you get monthly meetings, you pray together. Talk to us about what you're doing. Cause you got people coming in from all over the world.

Lori Kim: Yes. So we have our weekly Bible study on Tuesday. We have alternating times, right? Because we do have different time zones. We have people from Pacific and also out of country as well. So we do have alternating times and we have weekly prayers for our company that happens on Wednesday.

And we have our monthly wisdom events that usually takes place on a Friday. We are taking some more break right now, but we're hoping to resume in September. And this is where I had my Esther moment, because especially when I first started at Microsoft, because we're not a formal employee resource group yet, it wasn't as easy to find it at first, right? I actually learned about our Christian group at Wheaton College Center for Faith Innovation Executive Forum, and that was my Esther moment to say, how can we make this easier for people that are hungry to look for this belonging?

And that's when I shared the idea about having the monthly wisdom program, right? Where it's an open, safe space for Microsoft families, both believers and unbelievers, right? How do we interact informally, frequently and making our big company feel small as well? We started having this on a monthly basis on different topics that we as human beings are hungry to learn so we can thrive in wisdom.

Bring people together from all different, time zones and locations. And we can do that because of technology and ignite the transformation. And how can we be a blessing for one another and spark the curiosity to learn about what is it about us, that we have this wonderful time together to grow in wisdom, right? And that brings so much joy and excellence to our work. So I just love that we have this time because, when you have this faith based inclusion and diversity as part of that, and we do have our website that has all the inclusion and diversity that I'll be sharing with you in case any of our listeners are interested in learning more. But I feel that when we have the faith and work connection, when we have that integration we strive for excellence in our role, right? And having integrity and having the genuine care for our coworkers, because I think it really makes a huge difference for us to do our best work as a result.

Martha: Sure. We all know Microsoft is global, but you also have boots on the ground. You live in the windy city of Chicago. So you know, we hear, unfortunately, you always hear the bad news, right? So tell us how God is actually moving in Chicago. What are you seeing happen there that maybe we aren't hearing?

Lori Kim: Yes. Thank you for asking that. So we do have many stories and movements that are reflecting the good in Chicago, right? And the historic too, right? I AM movement. And there's also the spiritual church movement. I should do a quick research to find out the historical side of it.

And we have the Moody Bible Institute that was founded in Chicago as well. But the current, the strong current of hope and encouragement that we have going on right now, through the windy city, we have the faith and work movement that's happening, right? So I serve on the Chicago team and faith and work movement is one of the largest global networks of corporate workplace of fellowship that we have where we meet together, right? Encourage one another, right? And we catalyze strategic cities for spiritual renewal. And we impact the companies that impact the world in positive ways, right?

So we have workplace groups, coach leaders, and we connect with marketplace community and through the Chicago events that I serve on the team, we have focus groups and we also have faith and work workshop, where we share how we bring faith in our ecosystem and we share stories and we have seminars and we have events around Chicago, a lot of good. God is on the move.

Martha: That's exactly what I was thinking in my head was God is on the move. And that's why we asked the question because I think people need to hear that God is at work, in our work. And that is happening in Chicago.

Jim: Is there a website that you could plug for that faith and work movement? What was that?

Lori Kim: Absolutely. I will share the website with you. So you can please share the link with our listeners.

We have faith and work movement and there's also the religious freedom business foundation. There, there's all this amazing movement that is going on and why bringing our whole authentic self is only good for business, right? And it's really encouraging people, especially in this time of struggle, right? We have been living that anxious generation now, right? So I think it's really important that we lift each other up and encourage one another.

Jim: The only people living in anxiousness are the people that are caught in traffic in Chicago right now because it doesn't matter what time of day they go to Chicago, there's traffic on the Kennedy, the expressway. It's always traffic. All right.

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Martha: You know what's really neat about ePaymints is that it's actually run by a couple of Christian women that are leading that organization. So Lori, as we think about Christian working women and you're in the middle of a huge organization, so there are probably a lot of women also in that type of a role listening right now. Can you speak some words of encouragement to them as they seek to live out their faith and their work?

Lori Kim: Absolutely. Actually, I have three reminders that I wanted to share as the encouragement. First embrace all that God has made you to be. We can do it all as working woman, right? I'm a mom of two girls and puppy. And maybe not all at the same time and definitely not alone, right? Because there is time for everything and season for every activity under the heavens, right? Our journey may be our own, but we don't walk it alone, right? So that the support system that you have, the sources of strength that you have, and trust that God empowers everyone, right? Those that are ready to serve with love.

And number two, the beauty and the power of prayers, right? Your prayer plants seeds for the future, leaving a lasting legacy. So trusting God's plan, even through suffering, pray as long as it takes, right? And believe in the transformative power of our persistent prayer.

And finally, remember to rest, bless yourself with the rest, right? And you will be able to bless the world with your great work, and the importance of having a sacred rhythm. Whatever that may be for you, be still, still finding the time to be still in God's word, right? So that you can move forward in a sustainable way with joy and remembering to rest in him moment by moment is so important.

Jim: But I just, I want you to go deeper because everybody listening that is married to a woman or is a woman knows that life as a Christian working woman is significantly more complicated than life as a Christian working man because your role as wife and mother accentuates the challenges of working How do you balance that at home because you also talked about all the volunteer work you're doing, you got two teenage daughters Oh my Goodness, two teenage daughters is so much drama.

Martha: Don't rush it. Teen and preteen.

Jim: It makes me have a hot flash to think about those teenage daughter years again. Specifically, where do you go to get encouragement as a Christian working woman? Where do you, what's your resource to go to, to get encouraged to say, I can do this?

Lori Kim: Bible. And I think it's really important to, for me I start the day, I call it the miracle morning in his presence and reading even just one verse in Bible helps me to stay present in his presence. And to be reminded that he is for me and he is here with me and then he'll walk through whatever life throws at me together is huge, right? And knowing that I'm not alone in this and having a support system, your sources of your strength, right? Your family and your friends, right? And having a belonging at work like Christian group.

It's so important. I engage in employee resource group, a woman at Microsoft, right? And families at Microsoft because having that belonging and knowing that you're not going through this alone is huge encouragement and always starting the day in his presence in prayers and knowing that God's got this. Because God's got this, you've got this, right?

Jim: That's fantastic. I love that.

Martha: Such a good word. Any last final words of encouragement you want to give to the audience?

Lori Kim: I would just just repeat the same thing, the importance and the power of prayer and having your team of people, I call them life giving people, joy giving people, right? And with you throughout the time and just remembering not to give up and pray as long as it takes and fight to the finish line, there's no turning back, right? And having that eternal perspective, gospel lens. It's really helpful, especially when life gets really hard.

Jim: Lori Kim, thanks for sharing your story and a little bit of your journey and how God's using you in the high tech world. Thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Lori Kim: Thank you so much.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.

7/10/24 - 2050: The Entrepreneurial Rabbi

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: She dresses loud. She's always smiling. She's a world changer. She is Tamra Andress. Tamra is the five time number one bestselling author, international speaker, seasoned podcaster with three podcasts and a recognized thought leader in spiritual entrepreneurship.

Most of Tamra's time has spent serving as the founder and lead visionary for Fit in Faith Media, Fit Press publishing house, but Tamra also spends time being the president of the founder collective Nonprofit, which serves as a collaboration, discipleship, and equipping zone for other faith driven entrepreneurs. Basically, all of her initiatives are centralized to catalyze faith filled leaders in the messengers with movements so they can broadcast truth and advance the kingdom. Tamra hails from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. For those of you that don't know what that is, you'll have to look it up on the map. See if you can find Hampton Roads. I don't think you will.

Known to the speaking world as the entrepreneurial rabbi, and we're going to ask her lots of questions about this, she does cartwheels and handstands to rid herself of stress and evoke play in those around her. Tamra Andress, welcome to iWork4Him.

Tamra Andress: If we were in the same room, I would cartwheel for you.

 (laughter)

Martha: And that's referring to the fact that we got to be together in Florida for the U. S. Christian Chamber expo in April, and so Tamra, it is just a pleasure to have you on the iWork4Him podcast and be able to let our audience get to meet you like we have gotten to meet you. But let's start with your Jesus story. Tell us about it.

Tamra Andress: Yes. So I was first introduced to Jesus when I was in high school through the Ministry of Young Life. Which I am a huge advocate for still today. They have got the wildlife element as well. That's for middle schoolers. And that same organization or as what some people like to perceive as what is church hurt was my first experience with being hurt by people but feeling like I was being diminished by God. And so as a senior in high school after leading small groups and being on the worship team and being in front on the microphone, not shocking with all of the podcasts that I have, I really found myself in a place of dark abandonment and it was because I was walking in the light and walking in the dark simultaneously.

And as most of us at that time, we don't really know exactly who we are. And so we're existing in multiple areas and arenas to try and find out who that is. Fast forward to my late twenties, I was married. I had two kiddos. I had two businesses. Obviously I had a husband. Well, I say, obviously. Some people might not, but I did.

And I was really grateful for the life that we were leading, which a lot of people actually referred to us as Barbie and Ken. We were the youngest in the neighborhood. We had the white picket fence and the new cars, and we were both entrepreneurs. And we had a boy first and a girl second. And Wow, the pressure that I felt of people pleasing, of perfectionism, of slave driving towards this American dream that seemed to find itself in this fictitious reality.

And I ended up having a supernatural encounter with the Lord in my living room during that season because I had what I like to call my tombstone moment where the Lord literally flashed in front of my face in my kitchen a tombstone that said entrepreneur on it. And I thought to myself what a void response, what a void death sentence, what an obituary I would have if I was to die today.

And though they probably, in kindness, would have put good wife and good mom, I knew within my integrity, within my spirit, that was not the case, the way that I was living. And so when that encounter happened with Jesus, it was an actual presence experience where he lifted my face from my feet to his face.

He lifted my chin and he said, I see you. I know you. And the part that radically shaped my life and still to this day does is I still love you. And I felt in that moment for the first time in the middle of my mess, in the middle of this wild, chaotic life, this busy, I'm air quoting for those listening, lifestyle that I had created, based on what was projected on to me and what seemingly felt like the right thing to do, was all wrong. And so I changed my life from that point forward and a lot has happened in the last, gosh, nine years.

Jim: So let's talk about a little bit of that, that work life that you've had since then. How did God get you where you are today?

Tamra Andress: I went to business school and I actually started the business project that I formulated alongside six other students at James Madison University in Virginia. And the investors at a business plan competition that we were a part of, we got second place and they came up to us and said, somebody needs to do this.

In that group of seven of us that I was the seventh Three of them were guys. And so they just looked at each other because the business plan was around diapers and maternity. So they wanted to go nowhere near that at the ripe age of 20 years old. And the other three women that were in the group were wall street bound. They were accountants, finance driven, marketing driven.

And I knew at that point that this was already the initial idea of my mom. She was the one who gave us the project idea from the beginning. And so I jumped right into entrepreneurship right out of school. I never wrote a resume, never went to a job fair, never worked for anybody other than contracting work that I did later.

And I started nine different businesses through my twenties while also starting to implement this particular business. It is still alive today, which is really amazing. It was sold to my mom and then sold to another person here in the Hampton Roads area a couple of years ago. It's really cool to see your college project like thrive, thriving in someone else's hands. But entrepreneurship is just literally in my blood. My mom was an entrepreneur. My Nana was an entrepreneur.

But this particular business that I'm currently operating in, and since that radical encounter with the Lord, everything that I had built in my 20s was completely for the wrong reasons. And now I get to work from a foundation of the biblical knowledge that Christ is my identity. That nothing that I do, even that rap sheet that you sent off at the beginning of this show, sometimes I just want to crawl under the table and just point up to the Lord because it seriously has nothing to do with me and everything to do with glorifying him and sharing my message, which is ultimately my testimony for other people to be able to share theirs.

Martha: Wow. That is a lot. And it's so amazing to hear that I know you really believe that it is all God and that he has given you those experiences for where you are today. And it is your testimony. And that's the thing that we love to highlight on iWork4Him is the fact that we can't refute someone's testimony. What God has done in your life is real and it is part of what makes you, it is what makes you who you are today and what you can do for him.

Jim: That and the bubbles and the balloons and the colors and the earrings and all those kinds of things. All of that in one. Yes. That's great.

 (laughter)

Tamra Andress: And it's interesting because I got, you always can see, in hindsight where God was showing up in your life and where he actually physically was in those times, even when I was prodigal and not paying attention to him, not giving him gratitude for the blessings of my life, my children, all of those things.

I wasn't walking in my faith the way that I am now. And yet there was these little seeds, even of color. My, my wedding, in fact, was a rainbow wedding. Probably not shocking to you, but for those who have never seen, this was pre Pinterest. So don't judge me. Okay. I just really love color. And it was literally in a rain thunderstorm, lightning strike the building that we were actually having our reception in less than 200 yards away, while 300 umbrellas were on the beach.

So we were blessed that no one got hurt, but God has always been wildly present in our story, and a rainbow obviously was what came after that. And so it's a part of my brand per se, but it really is deep seated before branding was ever something I had a definition for.

Jim: I love that. I love that.

Martha: So what is it that today that God has you actually doing when you're referring to the business and what you're doing? What does that look like?

Tamra Andress: Yeah, so I help turn messages into movements by developing the heart first of the messenger and employing and deploying that through a publishing house. So it's not just the message of a book because we publish things every single day. You guys press publish when you submit your podcast into the world, just the same as you would if you're getting your book into global distribution.

And so they go through in a fully immersive experience with us. We are not the traditional publishing house that just takes your book and then says sayonara and also takes your royalties. We are more about giving that ownership and that lead way to you and really focusing on how do we turn this in to an effective strategy oriented business? Because I really believe that we honor our messages most, our stories, our testimonies, most when they create the deepest level of impact. And we're not just writing the story to press publish. We're actually writing the story to help others have transformation. So that's our for profit entity.

It's called Fit and Faith Media, as you alluded to, it's the publishing house. But my nonprofit is really spent in the area that we've been talking about this entire time. And honestly, was a shock to us that it was the most intriguing part of this wildly colorful booth that we had at the Christian Chamber of Commerce Expo.

Everyone wanted to know about this little poster that we had to the right, which is the Faith and Business Collision Space of the Founder Collective. It's a 501 C 3. It's a church. It's a mobilized church. We actually meet every single Wednesday, me and the co pastor, Anthony Hart, pour into a community, not from a pulpit type experience, but around the table. And so we invite other entrepreneurs into that space. And we're in the current state of developing an academy that will launch in January of 2026.

Jim: Wow. 2026. Wow. Now you are planning.

Tamra Andress: Yes. Yes. We are. We have to. There's a board of 20. We've got tens of thousands of dollars that's flowing in on a monthly basis for this to build and I believe it's the next wave of education. It's the business school that I wish I went to even though I had that great experience.

Jim: I'm assuming that the business school is all kingdom intertwined?

Tamra Andress: Yeah. So they'll be ordained and operating as a marketplace minister. So they actually get ordained and go through minister school and licensing in the experience, and then they'll also launch their businesses if it's not already launched or formulate a more formal strategy connected to it.

And they'll have an opportunity to pitch in front of a shepherd tank, which I'm super excited about. Instead of a shark tank, the shepherd tank will actually have, a hundred percent of the people will have a shepherd at the end. No one's left in that blue ocean experience and they'll have somebody who's walking it out with them depending on seed funding and their abilities.

Jim: I still hear that sheep will eat their own anyway though. So it's okay. It's all right.

 (laughter)

Jim: Sorry, I'm just trying to be funny. Lighten it up. Come on, Tamra. Okay. But in all of this, you are an ordained minister and you're known as an entrepreneurial rabbi. So that's a lot to unpack, but how did you realize that you were actually a pastor to entrepreneurial leaders?

Tamra Andress: Yeah, I don't think it even went in that revelatory space. It was after that radical experience that I mentioned, I quit two businesses. I quit the college project that I mentioned, sold it to my mom at that point. And I also had a national and global e commerce brand for maternity bras for women. And we were in the United Kingdom, the Canadian market and United States. And that in and of itself was like one of the hardest things to release because of the financial leverage points and contracts connected to it. So when God got ahold of me, I realized that nothing else mattered. And I went on a really long sabbatical.

It was three years that God allowed me not to work and to really understand who He is and who I am in his image. My work was my home. My work was my children. It was actually leaning into this blessing that I had taken full advantage of. And so I went to a year long worship school. I am not a worship singer and I do not play an instrument, but I love to dance.

And so I was the only dancer in this worship school and everyone was always, what's your instrument? And I'm like, My body? This is strange. I don't really know what I'm supposed to say here. But during that time, I was just, I had so many sweet encounters with the Lord, and He really started to rewrite my identity, which led me into going into a two year ministries program through my church.

It was the first time I ever even heard the concept of the Holy Spirit. All the churches I had gone to before, I'd just never experienced. I never knew what speaking in tongues was. I never knew what prophesying was. I never knew what a lot of the things that you hear about in the Acts church, I was completely oblivious to.

And so it was three years into that experience where I had already got my ordination and I was sitting at coffee shops with a lot of different people having conversations about the things that God had laid on their heart, the missions he had laid, the messages he had laid. And I was just helping to develop.

How do you turn this into something? How do we create momentum around this idea? Having no context of coaching, I had never had a business coach to that point. And one girl who is still one of my amazing clients today, and she's about to drop out of her full time career in order to jump into the calling that God has had on her, her side gig, if you will, is now going to become her full time after five years. Dr. Michelle, she's amazing. And she said, you should do this. And I was like, do what? You should help people understand. The way that your mind works is so incredible. I never thought of half the things that you're telling me.

Same coffee shop, different person was the person who first brought this idea or this title to life. And I was just pulling out of him the gold that God had already placed inside of him and helping him see it through the image of what I see and putting it in a business plan. And he, at the end, he was like, you're officially my rabbi. You're my entrepreneurial rabbi. And I'm like, that's awesome. I need a shirt with that on it.

That sounds so fun. So while it's in my bio, I still haven't gotten the shirt. I don't wear the hat just like I wouldn't want somebody to call me pastor if I had yet to pastor them. So as you hear that, it's just ultimately knowing that I just love to create for people and I love to create from the lens of the Lord on how he sees them prophetically rather than who they see themselves sometimes in a smaller box than what the Lord has provided for them.

Martha: It's so important for all of us to be looking at who we are in Christ and who he has created us to be. And having somebody like you walking alongside them in the journey is such a powerful thing. A few years ago, Jim and I were exploring more about how God created us and we took the StrengthsFinders test, and we both are really high in responsibility.

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Jim: Tamra, when you walk into a room, you are all sunshine. You're all joyous. You're bright. When you walked into the room at the U. S. Christian chamber, everybody knew here's the entourage that is Tamra Andress. How do you maintain all that joy all the time?

Tamra Andress: Oh man, I really love to stack play in my day. I really like to realize more so than anything. The Lord wants to co create with us and creating is fun. And when I remember like doodling when I was small, and hopefully you do too. Though I do have a son who sometimes loves to use the color black when he was small. And I was always like, ah, what does this mean?

 (laughter)

Tamra Andress: My best friend, we call her my black bestie because she literally wears all the dark colors. And I am the canvas or she's the canvas and I'm the color, but I always want to play with more fun. I always want more color. I want more vibrancy in my life. And so even as of recently, I was like, how can I create more play on my Wednesday?

Wednesdays is our mobilized church day. It's the day we come together. And it's like one of my favorite days of the week, but it is also a place where you pour out. All the ministers in the house say, amen. You're exhausted at the end of your Sunday, at the end of your Saturday, whenever it is that you do church.

And I thought, I don't, that doesn't have to be how this is. And so I actually started dancing more formally with a choreographer on Wednesday mornings. And so I do that. Then I have a couple of meetings and then I have church and then I've got my kiddos. And so that brings me so much life, so much perspective.

I learn about business and the Lord in there so much as he says things like Tamra, breathe. I'm like, I am breathing. I'm totally breathing. I've been breathing. He's no. Breathe deeper. Oh, that's what that feels like. And so teaching yourself presence, having fun with the Lord, exploring him in that way is the way that I evoke joy and he evokes joy through me.

I also just wake up with this amount of energy since I was little. And so I blame it on the Lord. He planned me that way for a reason. And I drove my mom nuts. And so I had to be quiet before coffee, but now I'm caffeine free. And I still wake up with this energy and I don't need coffee. So it's a, it's an experience for sure.

And I know when people say that they want to put it in a bottle and drink it for breakfast, that they mean that in all of the best ways, but it does come with sometimes really low crashes. So I can have an experience really high highs, but I can also, cause if you're not seeing me smiling or you're not seeing me in a space, people are like, what's wrong with you? Versus if I was just quiet and in a state of somberness, or I just, experience something hard. I don't feel like there's a lot of places that I can go that I feel really safe in to experience that part of myself.

And so I do have to be really mindful of that. So my community sees me cry. My team watches me cry and cries with me. And I've learned that if I don't wear the mask of a smile, but I own the identity of joy it's a victory.

Martha: So I just have a real quick question regarding like at the beginning of the show when you talked about being so busy and feeling all the pressure of the world for you to perform versus what looks like a very busy woman today. Like, how do you, just briefly tell me, how do you manage and making sure that you're protecting your family and your marriage and prioritizing that time with the Lord?

Because you did say, the dance is helping you with that. But for the person looking in, it might look still similar. So how are you making those things still a priority?

Tamra Andress: Yeah, the difference is the culture tells us to work hard, play hard. It tells us to work towards the weekend. It tells us to grind, right? It tells us hustle hard. And even, there's a lot of even Jesus quotes or sayings, they're not Jesus quotes, let's change that. They're Christianese, if you will, about hustling. And it's not the rhythm of grace. It's not God's plan for us. And so how do we work from rest and not work to rest is a huge part of the way that I schedule my days.

Even as of just yesterday, Martha, one thing that we're implementing as a team is I'm no longer doing one hour time blocks on my schedule. They're all be condensed to 45 minutes. They'll start five minutes after the hour and they'll give me. 10 minutes at the end of the hour, full intention to take that deep breath, to spend time with the Lord, preparing for what I'm about to step into the conversations that I'm going to have to look with his eyes instead of my own, to move at his pace instead of my own.

And then for five minutes after that time to be able to reflect and do any of the tasks associated to that meeting, even if it's just, it's to write it in my Asana, right? And keep that task manager on point. And then the next five minutes again to prepare for what's ahead. So there are rhythms of grace connected to how you can show up in intentionality.

We say busy is another four letter cuss word in our home that we don't use. And so when people are, how are you? Busy? If it comes out of my mouth, Tamra, how dare you say that? Check in on me, Martha, if I say I'm busy because I don't want to live that lifestyle ever again. It got me in a lot of deep water and I'm grateful that the Lord walks on it because he pulled me out. But man, it's not somewhere I want to be again.

Jim: That's for sure. Such good words. Yeah. Tamra was just sharing about protecting her marriage, her family, and her time with our Heavenly Father. There are things, there are other things we need to do to protect so we can keep our home and our businesses running smoothly.

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Martha: So Tamra, I have a Christian working woman question. What advice would you give to the Christian working woman who's listening right now anywhere in the country that's just really wondering if their calling is really in the marketplace, that they're feeling that tension?

Tamra Andress: That's so great. I think look at your past. Historically, the Lord is going to reveal to you those things. And where's the eagerness of your future? And is that eagerness because the world is presenting to you? Or is it because God is leading you into it? Entrepreneurship, like I said, was a part of my blood and I had zero idea or zero intention when I did finally quit and remove that part of my identity to ever do it again.

And the Lord was the one who positioned me into those conversations at those coffee shops with those people, with the coaches, who pulled that out of me. And so I want to do it for others. So don't rush into it would be the first thing that I would say. And also know that marketplace ministry doesn't mean you're an entrepreneur.

You can 100 percent be an intrapreneur. You can be someone who's working as a manager, C suite executive and employee. I had so much ministry in the times that I was an employee just as much as I do when I'm in charge of it, but that carries a lot of weight. There's a lot to entrepreneurship. So just be mindful of what that looks like. We all get to serve every day and we do so in so many different capacities.

I think we as marketplace ministers have more of an opportunity to bless the nations than even some of the confines of Four Walls Church, because I don't have four walls. I get to go wherever I want, whenever I want, however I want, and it's really beautiful to see the people like yourselves who I get to meet in different cities and states, and it's such a blessing. That's how Jesus did it, so we should be doing it too.

Jim: Tamra, if people want to check out what you're doing online and follow you, where do they find out more about your podcast, more about what you're doing? What's your website?

Tamra Andress: Yeah, it's Tamra Andress. And I say Tamra, like a camera minus the E. Tamra, like a camera minus the E. Tamra Andress. com. And that's where I hang out on Instagram as well. One of my favorite things to do, Jim, with people that are following me on social is praying over people. So if you have a prayer request, or there's something in your life that you are just looking for discernment over, clarity is the number one thing I hear from entrepreneurs, I'm just looking for clarity.

Side note, clarity comes in action just like faith comes in action but send me a note and I would love to send you a voice memo of an actual prayer. Not like I'll pray for you later or I'll put you on my prayer list kind of thing. Like actually I'm going to stop and I'm going to pray for you. So I look forward to connecting. I

Jim: love that. Tamra Andress, thanks so much for being on iWork4Him today.

Tamra Andress: My pleasure. Thank you guys. You're awesome.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.

7/3/24 - 2049: Creation Requires a Creator

Jim: Hey, welcome back to a special edition of iWork4Him. Normally Martha and I do interviews with folks who have a story to tell, and we get only a short form of that story. Today we're gonna finish capturing Nick Cinelli's story part two. Nick and I first met at a BNI group back in Seminole, Florida.

He's a consummate sales guy. He's a tremendous networker. And apparently he's a tremendous researcher. Nick always brings laughter to every room that he walks into and he's sharing the account of how his life was turned right side up really because of his desire to dance with Sue. Nick Cinelli, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Nick Cinelli: Thank you for having me.

Jim: All right. So when the last question we asked on the last episode was "in your expertise, what's more reliable? The scientific community behind evolution or the biblical community of scientists behind creation? And you uncategorically said the biblical community of scientists behind creation. And a lot of people that are listening to this show today are going biblical community of scientists and creation? That Science and creation can actually agree is your conclusion for all of this. That's what you came up with.

Nick Cinelli: Yeah, you have to remember that one is based on speak research and intelligence. When you put scientists and they come to believe in creation, what could be more powerful? Because if anything, science is of the opinion, by many people, that it's free from creation. It doesn't need God. So when you have even one or two scientists, that say, hey, this whole thing only can begin because of a creator. Only the creator makes sense of ourselves and things that we have and the universe and the Big Bang. If it wasn't for a creator, none of this would work. And you would think that scientists would be of the other side. And that's not true.

There's probably, today, there's probably more scientists, if they didn't worry about losing their job, by the way, I have to throw that out, believe in creation as the only possible solution than science. Okay, anybody who believes in science and doesn't believe in creation is lying to himself. It's a fairy tale. He might as well believe that Donald Duck created everything. That would be more believable, so to speak, than everything coming from nothing.

Jim: And even Donald Duck was created by Walt Disney. So all right, so all of this started, your research started because you liked Sue, a dance partner at a dance. You were doing dances on the weekend. You were in your, I'm guessing you were at that point in time, you were in your late fifties when you started dancing with Sue and you fell in love with her, but there was this conflict. She was a believer in Jesus and the Bible, and you were a believer in science and that the Bible was just a bunch of hooey. What happened? Tell us the rest of the story with Sue.

Nick Cinelli: Also keep in mind that Sue lived in Miami. Okay. And I live in Tampa. You lived in Tampa Bay. And in fact, one of the first meetings when she was driving up from Miami to go to Daytona beach to a dance, in her mind, she said, cause she had a crush actually on my friend.

She says, I wonder if Tom Dixon is going to be there today. She was just saying that to herself in the car. And she said a voice set to her and no, but his friend Nick will. And that was the weekend that my friend Tom couldn't make it to Daytona beach to dance, because he was going to attend the Gasparola Parade in Tampa at that time, they happen to come on the same weekend.

So when we both ended up being at the check in counter at the Hotel in Daytona she was as shocked as I was that we ran into each other because prior to that time we hadn't even paid attention to each other. And again, my story goes forth because when I found out she was a Christian, as a true scientist that I thought, my whole story begins because I'm trying to prove her wrong, that there was no God.

And when in fact when we walked into the dance floor, one of our friends said, sarcastically of course, his name was Ernie. We knew a lot of the couples at these dances. And as we approached this table, because we both knew him, he said, wow, now there's a marriage made in heaven. And at that time, I'm laughing to myself, because, not only did I not believe in God, I didn't believe in heaven. But it was something that I guess people say. And come to find out, it was a marriage. And we did get married. And we fell in love and she brought me to the Lord.

Jim: But how many years did that take from the time of that day of registering to go dancing for the day or for the weekend to the day where you actually got married? And you did all this research and you're trying to prove her wrong and tell her how stupid she was. How long did it take till you finally realized how wrong you were?

Nick Cinelli: I honestly, if I had to guess, cause I didn't keep track, but it was a constant research. I would say at least a couple of years. After a couple of years of research, I'll tell you, you can find out a lot about something if you research it for a couple of years. A year is a long time because I spent almost every day online doing things and reading books. And that's a lot of research. And as I said, the more I did, the more it proved to a creator, and it proved to the impossibility of happening on its own.

Jim: So how did you come to marry Sue?

Nick Cinelli: Came to marry Sue because I think what always influenced me was when my friend said, Now there's a marriage made in heaven. And when she told me that she was thinking about Tom, yet, a voice inside her says no, but Nick is here. So I don't know. I always felt some kind of an inspiration, and I fell in love with her.

Plus what she did, she turned my life around. How could I not want to be with her? How could I not want to marry her? Because I saw myself as going from black to white, a white to black, a green to blue. It's like she changed the whole thing.

Jim: And it was her faith that inspired you to really prove her wrong. But really what you found out is that she was right. All right, let's get back into more of this story. How long have you guys been been married now?

Nick Cinelli: 2002 we got married.

Jim: All right. So how, let's switch this to today, because you're done doing the research, trying to prove the Bible wrong and science right. Now, how do you use the Bible to prove that the science of creation is true?

Nick Cinelli: Because if you read the verses, First of all, it's the only thing that makes sense, if you think about it, from a logical point of view. The first law of science, which by the way is funny, because it says that In essence, all life comes from something. So how could it come from nothing if it has to come from something? And what is that something? The only other thing that fits the bill is a creator. Okay? You either have a creator or you don't.

If you don't have a creator, you have no creation. We wouldn't be having this conversation. So to exist, you need a creator. You need someone that started it all, and that's the first law of science. It doesn't say Creator, God forbid they should use that word, but it says something has to be to make everything else. What is that something that has to be? Wouldn't you call that the creator, if he was the first one?

Jim: Don't they use this thing, instead of saying creator, they use intelligent design? Isn't that what they say? Intelligent design?

Nick Cinelli: Yeah, without realizing it, they're saying God, the creator. Because to create something by intelligent design means you are an intelligent designer. Think about that. So they're saying they're admitting there's a God without even realizing it. That's what's so funny about the world who tries to deny the creator. It's laughable. They have nothing to stand on, but people follow again. Why? Why? Why? because they want to control and not have a second person looking over their shoulder.

It's almost as if they say, I wish I didn't have parents to tell me when I'm wrong. Wouldn't it be great if I didn't have parents so I wouldn't be wrong? Yeah. But you also wouldn't be here. So you better be careful what you wish for, okay? So if you wish to be left alone and not have parents, it means you're saying, I don't want to be here. Now, what person in their right mind would want to be here?

Jim: Yeah, that's a tough one because people really do argue out of both sides of their mouth. All right. So what, when you started doing your research and you started recognizing the Bible as really a scientific research manual, what did you learn from the Bible about creation?

Nick Cinelli: I learned that it's the only verse that makes sense. It explains everything, the heavens, and so on. Who even talks about the heavens, except the Bible? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. Show me that in any other context. In the beginning was nothing. I didn't exist, yet I'm talking to you. Is that what evolution is trying to say? Yeah. It's saying, Hi, I don't exist, but you're going to listen to me anyway, because there's a lot of people out there who fall for anything. I don't exist, mind you, but you're going to listen to me. The Word of God doesn't say that. It says in the beginning, God created everything and he loved his creation. And made his creation look like Him.

Jim: And I think that going back to that point you said a minute ago, people don't want to think about somebody looking over their shoulder, but that's not what God's intent is anyway. But I think you could talk about that. It's not about God wanting to rule over us and point out when we're wrong, God just loves us and he created us because he loves us and he wanted a relationship with us.

All right. So what did you learn about Jesus from the Bible that was proven by science and the research community?

Nick Cinelli: The fact that, first of all, the biblical history is true, there's evidence. There was followers of Jesus. There was many who saw him that died on the cross for us. Many were witnesses to the punishment he took on for us. And it makes sense because in in a broken world, you need a savior that would say, okay, I overlooked the brokenness. Remember, this goes back to the Garden of Eden. Okay, where they disobeyed God, Adam and Eve, and we are their descendants. So we have a certain rebel nature, so to speak, in us. And it's only when we deal with that, it's like anything else.

Any bad habits that we have will continue as bad habits unless we deal with them. So if we think we're the perfect person, here's what I want to ask the average person. Did you create the world? And a logical person would say, no. Is the world here? Yes. Then who created it, if it wasn't you? Gee, it had to be somebody else.

Oh, now I get it. This someone else, not just me. Why can't an atheist think that way? Go back to the first atheist, in other words. Keep going back, and you'll get to the point where it's me, or somebody else.

Jim: It's what a former vice president's once said: that's an inconvenient truth.

All right. So how did you - when you're doing your research, how did you determine that Jesus wasn't just a good guy versus a liar and in fact that he was God? Because first you'd use science to, you were trying to prove that the Bible was wrong and a bunch of hooey using science. But eventually you had to deal with Jesus who said he was God. He is God and that they say he raised from the dead. How? How'd you come to that conclusion?

Nick Cinelli: You have to remember that when you bring up the topic of Jesus, you have to realize he was God and the son of God and he came to redeem us from our sin. We were born with original sin, again, because of Adam and Eve. So your question, in essence, you want me to reveal or say what?

Jim: No, what I'm saying is, how did you determine that? Because a lot of people look at Jesus and go, he was just a good guy.

Nick Cinelli: Oh yeah, That's the biggest lie of all. He can't be a good guy. Why? Why can he not be a good guy? There's only two choices. He can only be the God he says he is, or the biggest liar in the world. Can't have it both ways. Okay. And many Christians, many non Christians, by the way, have come to believe in him because of that quandary. Anyone who says he's the son of God and is God, and if he's not, he's the biggest liar in the world. And this is why, and it's so great because Jesus as God made it that way.

He put eggs on the face of any religion that says Jesus was just a good man. Think about it. Buddhists, Muslim, whatever you want to say. They all say, gee, they all acknowledge Jesus as a good man. How could he be a good man if he says he's God? So you're saying he either is the biggest liar in the world, Oh, there is no such thing as Jesus. You can't have it both ways. If I say I'm God, only two things can exist. I am God, or I'm a liar. I can't be a good guy. How could I be a good guy if I'm claiming to be God and I'm not him? And that in essence, it's the logic that proves how great and infinitely smarter God and Jesus is than we are.

Because who else would have set the trap for all other religions? You look at every religion in the world today, and they will tell you and acknowledge in their website, in their writing, that Jesus was not God. He was just a good guy. That proves how misled they are. You can't make that statement. All you can say is he's a liar, or he is God.

But you can't say he was just a good man and not God. He didn't leave that up to us. And some famous Christians have said that. I didn't make this up, by the way. He didn't leave that up to us. And that shows his superiority and love for us. He didn't want us to be embarrassed by saying that he was a good man, but not God. Because we would be hypocritical in that statement. So who else would set the trap of every other, there's about 50 other religions and they all will tell you on their website right now before they change it after this broadcast, they might want to change that. But they all will claim that he's a good man, but was not God.

That shows that that religion is false and dead because you can't have it both ways. So who was following these religions that are saying that God was, he was a good man, but not God? Because that shows they're lying. Don't you see the genius of God, the creator? He set a trap for every other religion and they don't even know it.

Just like Jesus was the only empty tomb in history. If your religion does not include believing in Jesus and God, his father, that's the only true religion, all the others are dead and buried. Why would I want to follow Buddha? He's dead and buried. Why would I want to follow Muhammad? He's dead and buried. You could visit his grave. All these other leaders have graves well marked. So I'm going to follow somebody that's dead and buried? What is he going to do for me?

So it leads me back to only Jesus has an open grave. That means he rose from the dead. That's the guy I want. Even if I'm the dumbest person in the world, why wouldn't you choose life? Why would you choose death? What is death going to do for you?

Jim: And you just said something so powerful because Jesus didn't just come to save us from our sins. But he came to give us life. It was, he came to give us life because the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus came for us to have life here on this planet and live it to the fullest.

And that was the reality of who Jesus is. And you're right, not a single other world religion has a savior that was raised from the dead. But you also say in your book, something a little controversial. Okay, you say a lot of controversial things but this you said that not all forms of Christianity are true and biblical. What do you mean by that? Are there really forms of Christianity if they're not true?

Nick Cinelli: Many beliefs, some beliefs, will call themselves Christianity. It's like a lot of people might call themselves American. You can't call yourself an American, for example, if you don't believe in the Constitution.

Then you're a phony American, so to speak. Okay? Remember that everything goes back to the original. In America, we have the Constitution. So if it doesn't line up with the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, then it's probably wrong. And it's the same thing if something doesn't line up with the Bible, then it's definitely wrong.

Because both books cover everything. They cover, for example, the Constitution covers voting. How you get this, how you would elect senators, and so on and so forth. The Bible is the same way. It's our book that will let us lead a good life, not harming anyone, and be able to promote the goodness that God gave us.

He gave us a brain to use. And the question that you asked also has to do, yeah, there are religions who do not follow the Bible. And that's no different than politicians who don't follow the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They're going to make mistakes.

Because they're trying to weave in something that doesn't belong there and they've done the same thing with Christianity There's a lot of Christians who are almost afraid of the Bible because the Bible call out sin. They're afraid to call out sin because they think they're gonna have less people in the pews. Less people means less money.

Jim: That goes back to that same vice president and that's an inconvenient truth because you start to read your Bible. That could be an inconvenient truth All right so in the end of your research who do you find is behind all of this falseness, the theory of evolution and all the world religions that support it? Who do you find is behind it all?

Nick Cinelli: Satan, the deceiver of all things. There really is only two things in the world when it's all said and done. Good and evil. God is good. And Satan is evil. God is the creator. He wants you to have life and life more abundantly. And Satan wants to destroy him and you not think about him.

In fact, Satan would love if every person in the world hated God and Jesus, or didn't believe they were true. Then he would be as a God. Which, remember, that's why he was thrown out of heaven to begin with. Okay, he wanted to take on God, and he lost. And he's still losing.

Jim: So summarize, if maybe somebody maybe missed part one of this interview, summarize your scientific findings after all of this research. Summarize it in a paragraph or two, what you really found out about science, about evolution, about creation. Summarize it for us.

Nick Cinelli: First of all, there would be no science if there was no creator. Because science is based on the physical world that we can see, and the only way the physical world came about was through a creator.

Okay, science didn't come up and create this world. Science only tries to explain what we have and what we see. Saying that science believes this and science proves that, that's a lie, because science doesn't do any of those things. Men have done those things in testing science, they've come up with things that either lined up or didn't line up or things they could prove or things they couldn't prove.

And anyway, by the way, that's how you can tell a real deceiver. They're very close to being like Satan. Anyone who tells you that you don't need a creator, okay, everything was always here. or whatever they come up with. You can tell that person as a liar because everything was not here. Explain to me how everything got here and you'll be here.

Okay. Aliens brought us here. How did the aliens get here? There was a big bang. What, how did the big bang get here? We all came from, there's a book out, lots of books. In fact, there's a guy with a bowtie. I call him the bowtie pasta for brains man, by the way. He says we all came from nothing. We had to be, so here we are.

Pretty good. So I guess he was here at the beginning and saw all of this happen from nothing? Or is he just guessing? It turns out he's just guessing because he never said he was here from the beginning. Anybody who tries to explain the beginning and tries to leave out God the creator Is that from the beginning? Because it's impossible.

Science will not allow you to come to where we are without believing in the creator. It's impossible. So what does the atom have to do with all that? Because the atom is the structure that, in other words, as basic as you go, you're going to end up with a nucleus, electrons and protons. So there's a particle. Did an electron one day just say, I think I'm going to just fly around or the nucleus of the atom? That was an integral part. That was a creation. This is what we're made of, okay? And that's why it says we are made in his image. The image of God is the particles of creation. Everything that's in creation is his. And we are made in his image. That's what that means. We're made of atoms just like he is. He's the head of the atoms, so to speak.

Jim: After you did all this research, and it worked so long, in case somebody missed part one, how long did it take before you became a true follower of Jesus? After you'd done all this research, and you realized, Hey, I'm on the wrong side of this argument. How long did it really take?

Nick Cinelli: I know it took at least two years. Over two years. I don't know if anybody's ever done research continuously for two years, but I'll tell you, you can beat a subject to death in a couple of years.

Jim: Oh, we have access so much today. Yeah. We have access to so much of that. Everything's online today. We got it. It's all easy.

Nick Cinelli: But even if you wanna go back to Britannica, look through books, the old fashioned way that people used to do research, it's still gonna lead you to the same conclusion. Okay. The truth is the truth, no matter how much we try to either change it or fix it to out there. Remember, everybody would like to live their own life, be left alone and not told what to do. Unfortunately, God has a better plan. Okay. He wants us to live an abundant life and live it more abundantly.

We're able to live a more abundant life thanks to the Creator. So why would you want to fight somebody that only promises good and joy for you? If I know my parents absolutely were on my side and only wanted the best for me and so on and so forth why would I deny my parents?

Jim: It's a great question. You've been married to Sue now 22 years you guys have been learning how to be married, which is no, that's no easy task being married for sure. Have you and Sue had a lot of opportunity to take these conversations deeper? Do you guys ever have, hey, tonight, let's just, let's battle about science? When you have friends over, do you get to do this together? Talk to us about how your relationships with Sue has blossomed after you did all this research.

Nick Cinelli: I think it's blossomed in the respect that I've had, different and more profound respect for her. Because when you admit and find out through errors and omissions or whatever you want to call it that you were wrong and she was right. And how could I not have the ultimate respect for her? And yeah, we have our ups and downs, but I think overall we know where we stand as a couple. Because we've gone through a lot.

Remember we had a lot of drives from Tampa to Miami. Okay. So we spent a lot of time talking and then since we've been married, her family's sometimes in one direction, my family's in another and so on. But together we've worked through many things and we're still doing it and we still are worshipers. We still try to go to church. In fact, she went to a women's Bible study last night at our church. When we can't make the physical church, we always watch it online. And I don't know if this will help anybody, but 90 percent of what I watch on TV, including what Sue watches, is Christian television. CTN channel 2 WCLF.

So and I always thank them for putting on such great program. And we're at the point where we're going to support them also financially. But I think a good start is if you don't already watch Christian TV, put that on your menu because there's a lot of good programs that come on there from talk shows to stories about life. And they reiterate the true story.

Jim: As we come to the end of this podcast, a couple more questions for you. Do you think there's any hope for the scientific community today?

Nick Cinelli: Of course, more and more of them are becoming believers of creation. Like I said, there's over a thousand. And these are people from all walks of life around the world, by the way. They're not just American scientists or scientists from India or scientists from Africa. They're everywhere. There's a great mixture. And again, to have a thousand, that's a lot. Because remember, in some parts of the world, To say that you believe in God, you would lose your job So I think if there's a thousand on record, there's probably four or five thousand in reality. That's a lot of scientists.

I don't know how many scientists there are in the world, but it's probably a big number, But remember some people who dabble in it call themselves a scientist many times.

Jim: When you've taken your story to social media, to your family, do you find that people are receptive to the answers that you found in your research? Do you find that people respect that you took time to really look this up?

Nick Cinelli: Not as much as I would think. Remember, sometimes when you believe in a message and you think everybody's gonna fall over backwards to help you or say, Hey, good job. I like what you wrote. There are few and far in between coming and, that's hesitant again because we're afraid sometimes to embrace the truth.

We don't want to tell Nick he did a good job with this book necessarily. Okay. Thank you. Because how about if it offends my mate? How about if it offends my boss? How about if it offends my political party? I don't want necessarily somebody saying I'm on Nick's side and then they agree with what Nick believes.

So it's human nature, and by the way, I don't need anyone to say good job. Just from you is enough. Okay, , but I don't need it because God has blessed me in so many ways. I wish people could experience what I've experienced.

Jim: Okay. That's powerful.

Nick Cinelli: And I tear up many times thinking about it. I tear up when I consider how blessed I am to have Sue. I don't know if her own family even knows that. I know some of the family does. And people have to come to the end of themselves. And that I want to give even my family and other families or relatives time and space. They have to come to it like I came to it. Sure, maybe they would like the book and they would read it, maybe it could turn their life around now. If they're not right, right now, at some point they'll be right.

Jim: Let me ask this one final question. 22 years ago you married Sue, after years of research and realizing the Bible was true. This show is iWork4Him. It's all about the connecting of our faith and our work. And you've had a lot of jobs, mostly sales jobs, because you're a sales guy. You like to sell things. You're good at representing products. How has your faith and this revolutionary understanding that creation is real, how has that impacted how you do it, do your work?

Nick Cinelli: Oh it's changed it 100%. Where at one time as a salesman that you say, sometimes I could exaggerate the truth or cut corners and so on. All salesmen tend to do it, or at least that's the reputation that we have. But now I find out I don't need to do that anymore.

I feel good about myself, my wife and my family. I'm glad I went through this journey. I wish anybody who doesn't believe in the creator would go through their journey. And if their journey is just reading my book, or if their journey is talking to other Christians, I hope more people would invite people that they think would not be receptive to go to church with them, invite them to a Bible study, invite them to a night or a day, depending on when, you have that. Many churches have small groups. Get involved in a small group.

And see if this fits and it makes sense outside of what I think and what I believe. I think people sometimes are afraid to test things out for themselves. And I think that's the bottom line. If you test things out, the truth will set you free and it'll be obvious.

Jim: If somebody wants to get a copy of your book, do you have a way for them to get a copy? Do you have a PDF of your book or a way for somebody to get it? Or can they write to you to get a copy? How does somebody get a copy of your book? The true lies of science?

Nick Cinelli: Not being that technically minded, as we are not where you are I would hope that maybe that would work through you and I could provide you the PDF could you handle the mechanics?

Jim: Yeah, we could probably get that done. Just email me, Jim@iWork4Him. That's Jim at I work the number 4 him. com and I'll get you a copy of Nick's book. The true lies of science. Nick Cinelli. It's been fun knowing you. We've known each other a lot of years already. It's been fun capturing your story today. Thank you for sharing your heart on both part one and part two of this special broadcast. Thank you, Nick Cinelli,, for being here.

Nick Cinelli: Do I have time for one quick thing?

Keep in mind that there's two versions of my book. One a streamlined one. I call it my basic testimony. Then I have another version where it's the same book included footnotes and like the superseded theories and so on. One has footnotes, the proofs, I call it. So there's two versions. One is basic stripped down, just the book I originally wrote. And then one where I've stapled inserts that prove what I'm talking about, like the superseded science and the thousand scientists who believe in Creation and so on all those things. I have footnotes and extra forms just so you know. So there's really two two parts of my book.

Jim: Nick will get me a copy of those PDFs and i'll get them to you if you reach out to me. Jim at I work for him. com. That's jim at I work the number 4 him dot com nick cianelli. Thank you.

You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim Brangenberg. I'm a Christ follower. My workplace, it's my mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!